Who is Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev? Ivan Turgenev: biography, life path and creativity. Novels and stories. Reflection of childhood memories in literature

TURGENEV Ivan Sergeevich(1818 - 1883), Russian writer, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1860). In the cycle of stories “Notes of a Hunter” (1847-52) he showed the high spiritual qualities and talent of the Russian peasant, the poetry of nature. In the socio-psychological novels “Rudin” (1856), “The Noble Nest” (1859), “On the Eve” (1860), “Fathers and Sons” (1862), the stories “Asya” (1858), “Spring Waters” (1872) ) images of the passing noble culture and new heroes of the era of commoners and democrats, images of selfless Russian women were created. In the novels “Smoke” (1867) and “Nov” (1877) he depicted the life of Russians abroad and the populist movement in Russia. In his later years, he created the lyrical and philosophical “Poems in Prose” (1882). A master of language and psychological analysis, Turgenev had a significant influence on the development of Russian and world literature.

TURGENEV Ivan Sergeevich, Russian writer.

On his father's side, Turgenev belonged to an old noble family; his mother, nee Lutovinova, was a wealthy landowner; On her estate, Spasskoye-Lutovinovo (Mtsensk district, Oryol province), the childhood years of the future writer passed, who early learned to have a subtle sense of nature and to hate serfdom. In 1827 the family moved to Moscow; At first, Turgenev studied in private boarding schools and with good home teachers, then, in 1833, he entered the literature department of Moscow University, and in 1834 he transferred to the history and philology department of St. Petersburg University. One of the strongest impressions of his early youth (1833), falling in love with Princess E. L. Shakhovskaya, who was experiencing an affair with Turgenev’s father at that time, was reflected in the story “First Love” (1860).

In 1836, Turgenev showed his poetic experiments in a romantic spirit to the writer of Pushkin’s circle, university professor P. A. Pletnev;

In May 1838, Turgenev went to Germany (the desire to complete his education was combined with rejection of the Russian way of life, based on serfdom). The disaster of the steamship “Nicholas I”, on which Turgenev sailed, will be described by him in the essay “Fire at Sea” (1883; in French). Until August 1839, Turgenev lived in Berlin, attended lectures at the university, studied classical languages, wrote poetry, and communicated with T. N. Granovsky and N. V. Stankevich. After a short stay in Russia, in January 1840 he went to Italy, but from May 1840 to May 1841 he was again in Berlin, where he met M. A. Bakunin. Arriving in Russia, he visits the Bakunins' estate Premukhino, meets with this family: soon an affair with T. A. Bakunina begins, which does not interfere with the connection with the seamstress A. E. Ivanova (in 1842 she will give birth to Turgenev's daughter Pelageya). In January 1843 Turgenev entered service in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In 1843, a poem based on modern material “Parasha” appeared, which was highly appreciated by V. G. Belinsky. Acquaintance with the critic, which turned into friendship (in 1846 Turgenev became the godfather of his son), rapprochement with his entourage (in particular, with N. A. Nekrasov) changed his literary orientation: from romanticism he turned to an ironic and morally descriptive poem (“The Landowner” , “Andrei”, both 1845) and prose close to the principles of the “natural school” and not alien to the influence of M. Yu. Lermontov (“Andrei Kolosov”, 1844; “Three Portraits”, 1846; “Breter”, 1847).

November 1, 1843 Turgenev meets the singer Pauline Viardot (Viardot-Garcia), whose love will largely determine the external course of his life. In May 1845 Turgenev retired. From the beginning of 1847 to June 1850, he lives abroad (in Germany, France; Turgenev is a witness to the French Revolution of 1848): he takes care of the sick Belinsky during his travels; communicates closely with P. V. Annenkov, A. I. Herzen, meets J. Sand, P. Mérimée, A. de Musset, F. Chopin, C. Gounod; writes the stories “Petushkov” (1848), “Diary of an Extra Man” (1850), the comedy “Bachelor” (1849), “Where it breaks, there it breaks,” “Provincial Girl” (both 1851), the psychological drama “A Month in the Country” (1855).

The main work of this period is “Notes of a Hunter,” a cycle of lyrical essays and stories that began with the story “Khor and Kalinich” (1847; the subtitle “From the Notes of a Hunter” was invented by I. I. Panaev for publication in the “Mixture” section of the Sovremennik magazine) ); a separate two-volume edition of the cycle was published in 1852; later the stories “The End of Chertopkhanov” (1872), “Living Relics”, “Knocking” (1874) were added. The fundamental diversity of human types, isolated for the first time from a previously unnoticed or idealized mass of people, testified to the infinite value of every unique and free human personality; the serfdom appeared as an ominous and dead force, alien to natural harmony (detailed specifics of heterogeneous landscapes), hostile to man, but unable to destroy the soul, love, creative gift. Having discovered Russia and the Russian people, laying the foundation for the “peasant theme” in Russian literature, “Notes of a Hunter” became the semantic foundation of all of Turgenev’s further work: from here the threads stretch to the study of the phenomenon of the “superfluous man” (the problem outlined in “Hamlet of Shchigrovsky District”) , and to the understanding of the mysterious (“Bezhin Meadow”), and to the problem of the artist’s conflict with the everyday life that stifles him (“Singers”).

In April 1852, for his response to the death of N.V. Gogol, which was banned in St. Petersburg and published in Moscow, Turgenev, by the highest order, was put on the congress (the story “Mumu” ​​was written there). In May he was sent to Spasskoye, where he lived until December 1853 (work on an unfinished novel, the story “Two Friends”, acquaintance with A. A. Fet, active correspondence with S. T. Aksakov and writers from the Sovremennik circle); A.K. Tolstoy played an important role in efforts to free Turgenev.

Until July 1856, Turgenev lived in Russia: in the winter, mainly in St. Petersburg, in the summer in Spassky. His closest environment is the editorial office of Sovremennik; acquaintances took place with I. A. Goncharov, L. N. Tolstoy and A. N. Ostrovsky; Turgenev takes part in the publication of F. I. Tyutchev’s “Poems” (1854) and provides it with a preface. Mutual cooling with the distant Viardot leads to a brief, but almost ending in marriage, affair with a distant relative O. A. Turgeneva. The stories “The Calm” (1854), “Yakov Pasynkov” (1855), “Correspondence”, “Faust” (both 1856) were published.

“Rudin” (1856) opens a series of Turgenev’s novels, compact in volume, unfolding around a hero-ideologist, journalistically accurately capturing current socio-political issues and, ultimately, placing “modernity” in the face of the unchanging and mysterious forces of love, art, nature . Inflaming the audience, but incapable of action, the “superfluous man” Rudin; Lavretsky, dreaming in vain about happiness and coming to humble self-sacrifice and hope for happiness for the people of modern times (“The Noble Nest”, 1859; events take place in the context of the approaching “great reform”); the “iron” Bulgarian revolutionary Insarov, who becomes the chosen one of the heroine (that is, Russia), but is “stranger” and doomed to death (“On the Eve”, 1860); “new man” Bazarov, hiding a romantic rebellion behind nihilism (“Fathers and Sons”, 1862; post-reform Russia is not freed from eternal problems, and “new” people remain people: “dozens” will live, but those captured by passion or idea will die); the characters of “Smoke” (1867), sandwiched between “reactionary” and “revolutionary” vulgarity; revolutionary populist Nezhdanov, an even more “new” person, but still unable to answer the challenge of a changed Russia (“Nov”, 1877); all of them, together with minor characters (with individual dissimilarity, differences in moral and political orientations and spiritual experience, varying degrees of closeness to the author), are closely related, combining in different proportions the features of two eternal psychological types of the heroic enthusiast, Don Quixote, and the absorbed himself as a reflector, Hamlet (cf. programmatic article “Hamlet and Don Quixote”, 1860).

Having departed abroad in July 1856, Turgenev finds himself in a painful whirlpool of ambiguous relationships with Viardot and his daughter, who was raised in Paris. After the difficult Parisian winter of 1856-57 (the gloomy “Trip to Polesie” was completed), he went to England, then to Germany, where he wrote “Asya,” one of the most poetic stories, which, however, can be interpreted in a social way (article by N. G. . Chernyshevsky “Russian man at rendez-vous”, 1858), and spends the autumn and winter in Italy. By the summer of 1858 he was in Spassky; in the future, Turgenev’s year will often be divided into “European, winter” and “Russian, summer” seasons.

After “On the Eve” and N. A. Dobrolyubov’s article dedicated to the novel, “When will the real day come?” (1860) Turgenev breaks up with the radicalized Sovremennik (in particular, with N.A. Nekrasov; their mutual hostility persisted until the end). The conflict with the “younger generation” was aggravated by the novel “Fathers and Sons” (pamphlet article by M. A. Antonovich “Asmodeus of Our Time” in Sovremennik, 1862; the so-called “schism in the nihilists” largely motivated the positive assessment of the novel in the article by D. I. Pisarev “Bazarov”, 1862). In the summer of 1861 there was a quarrel with L.N. Tolstoy, which almost turned into a duel (reconciliation in 1878). In the story “Ghosts” (1864), Turgenev condenses the mystical motifs outlined in “Notes of a Hunter” and “Faust”;

this line will be developed in “The Dog” (1865), “The Story of Lieutenant Ergunov” (1868), “The Dream”, “The Story of Father Alexei” (both 1877), “Song of Triumphant Love” (1881), “After Death (Klara Milich )" (1883). The theme of the weakness of man, who turns out to be the toy of unknown forces and doomed to non-existence, to a greater or lesser extent colors all of Turgenev’s late prose; it is most directly expressed in the lyrical story “Enough!” (1865), perceived by contemporaries as evidence (sincere or flirtatiously hypocritical) of Turgenev’s situationally determined crisis (cf. F. M. Dostoevsky’s parody in the novel “Demons”, 1871).

Along with stories about the past (“The Steppe King Lear”, 1870; “Punin and Baburin”, 1874) and the above-mentioned “mysterious” stories in the last years of his life, Turgenev turned to memoirs (“Literary and Everyday Memoirs”, 1869-80) and “Poems in Prose” (1877-82), where almost all the main themes of his work are presented, and the summing up takes place as if in the presence of approaching death. Death was preceded by more than a year and a half of painful illness (spinal cord cancer).

Biography of I.S. Turgenev

Film “The Great Singer of Great Russia. I.S. Turgenev"

Biography

Origin and early years

After graduation

Creativity flourishes

Dramaturgy

1850s

Last years

Death and funeral

Personal life

"Turgenev girls"

Passion for hunting

The meaning and evaluation of creativity

Turgenev on stage

Foreign criticism

Bibliography

Novels and stories

Turgenev in illustrations

Film adaptations

In St. Petersburg

Toponymy

Public institutions

Monuments

Other objects

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev(October 28, 1818, Orel, Russian Empire - August 22, 1883, Bougival, France) - Russian realist writer, poet, publicist, playwright, translator; Corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of Russian language and literature (1860), honorary doctor of the University of Oxford (1879). One of the classics of Russian literature who made the most significant contribution to its development in the second half of the 19th century.

The artistic system he created influenced the poetics of not only Russian, but also Western European novels of the second half of the 19th century. Ivan Turgenev was the first in Russian literature to begin to study the personality of the “new man” - the sixties, his moral qualities and psychological characteristics, thanks to him the term “nihilist” began to be widely used in the Russian language. He was a promoter of Russian literature and drama in the West.

The study of the works of I. S. Turgenev is a mandatory part of general education school programs in Russia. The most famous works are the cycle of stories “Notes of a Hunter”, the story “Mumu”, the story “Asya”, the novels “The Noble Nest”, “Fathers and Sons”.

Biography

Origin and early years

The family of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev came from an ancient family of Tula nobles, the Turgenevs. In a memorial book, the mother of the future writer wrote: “ On Monday, October 28, 1818, a son, Ivan, 12 inches tall, was born in Orel, in his home, at 12 o’clock in the morning. Baptized on the 4th of November, Feodor Semenovich Uvarov with his sister Fedosya Nikolaevna Teplova».

Ivan's father Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev (1793-1834) served at that time in a cavalry regiment. The carefree lifestyle of the handsome cavalry guard upset his finances, and to improve his position, in 1816 he entered into a marriage of convenience with the middle-aged, unattractive, but very wealthy Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova (1787-1850). In 1821, my father retired with the rank of colonel of a cuirassier regiment. Ivan was the second son in the family. The mother of the future writer, Varvara Petrovna, came from a wealthy noble family. Her marriage to Sergei Nikolaevich was not happy. The father died in 1834, leaving three sons - Nikolai, Ivan and Sergei, who died early from epilepsy. The mother was a domineering and despotic woman. She herself lost her father at an early age, suffered from the cruel attitude of her mother (whom her grandson later portrayed as an old woman in the essay “Death”), and from a violent, drinking stepfather, who often beat her. Due to constant beatings and humiliation, she later fled to her uncle, after whose death she became the owner of a magnificent estate and 5,000 souls.

Varvara Petrovna was a difficult woman. Feudal habits coexisted in her with being well-read and educated; she combined concern for raising children with family despotism. Ivan was also subjected to maternal beatings, despite the fact that he was considered her beloved son. The boy was taught literacy by frequently changing French and German tutors. In Varvara Petrovna’s family, everyone spoke exclusively French to each other, even prayers in the house were said in French. She traveled widely and was an enlightened woman who read a lot, but also mainly in French. But her native language and literature were not alien to her: she herself had excellent, figurative Russian speech, and Sergei Nikolaevich demanded that the children write letters to him in Russian during their father’s absences. The Turgenev family maintained connections with V. A. Zhukovsky and M. N. Zagoskin. Varvara Petrovna followed the latest literature, was well informed about the works of N. M. Karamzin, V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov and N. V. Gogol, whom she readily quoted in letters to her son.

A love of Russian literature was also instilled in young Turgenev by one of the serf valets (who later became the prototype of Punin in the story “Punin and Baburin”). Until he was nine years old, Ivan Turgenev lived on his mother’s hereditary estate Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, 10 km from Mtsensk, Oryol province. In 1827, the Turgenevs, in order to give their children an education, settled in Moscow, buying a house on Samotek. The future writer first studied at the Weidenhammer boarding school, then became a boarder with the director of the Lazarev Institute I.F. Krause.

Education. Beginning of literary activity

In 1833, at the age of 15, Turgenev entered the literature department of Moscow University. At the same time, A. I. Herzen and V. G. Belinsky studied here. A year later, after Ivan’s older brother joined the Guards Artillery, the family moved to St. Petersburg, where Ivan Turgenev transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy at St. Petersburg University. At the university, T. N. Granovsky, the future famous scientist-historian of the Western school, became his friend.

At first, Turgenev wanted to become a poet. In 1834, as a third-year student, he wrote the dramatic poem “Stheno” in iambic pentameter. The young author showed these samples of writing to his teacher, professor of Russian literature P. A. Pletnev. During one of his lectures, Pletnev quite strictly analyzed this poem, without revealing its authorship, but at the same time also admitted that there was “something in the author.” These words prompted the young poet to write a number of more poems, two of which Pletnev published in 1838 in the Sovremennik magazine, of which he was the editor. They were published under the signature “…..въ”. The debut poems were “Evening” and “To the Venus of Medicine”.

Turgenev's first publication appeared in 1836 - in the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education he published a detailed review of A. N. Muravyov's “On a Journey to Holy Places.” By 1837, he had already written about a hundred short poems and several poems (the unfinished “The Old Man’s Tale,” “Calm on the Sea,” “Phantasmagoria on a Moonlit Night,” “Dream”).

After graduation

In 1836, Turgenev graduated from the university with the degree of a full student. Dreaming of scientific activity, the following year he passed the final exam and received a candidate's degree. In 1838 he went to Germany, where he settled in Berlin and took up his studies seriously. At the University of Berlin he attended lectures on the history of Roman and Greek literature, and at home he studied the grammar of ancient Greek and Latin. Knowledge of ancient languages ​​allowed him to read the ancient classics fluently. During his studies, he became friends with the Russian writer and thinker N.V. Stankevich, who had a noticeable influence on him. Turgenev attended lectures by the Hegelians and became interested in German idealism with its teaching about world development, about the “absolute spirit” and about the high calling of the philosopher and poet. In general, the entire way of Western European life made a strong impression on Turgenev. The young student came to the conclusion that only the assimilation of the basic principles of universal human culture can lead Russia out of the darkness in which it is immersed. In this sense, he became a convinced “Westerner.”

In the 1830-1850s, an extensive circle of literary acquaintances of the writer was formed. Back in 1837, there were fleeting meetings with A.S. Pushkin. At the same time, Turgenev met V. A. Zhukovsky, A. V. Nikitenko, A. V. Koltsov, and a little later - with M. Yu. Lermontov. Turgenev had only a few meetings with Lermontov, which did not lead to a close acquaintance, but Lermontov’s work had a certain influence on him. He tried to master the rhythm and stanza, stylistics and syntactic features of Lermontov's poetry. Thus, the poem “The Old Landowner” (1841) is in some places close in form to Lermontov’s “Testament,” and in “The Ballad” (1841) the influence of “Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov” is felt. But the most tangible connection with Lermontov’s work is in the poem “Confession” (1845), the accusatory pathos of which brings it closer to Lermontov’s poem “Duma.”

In May 1839, the old house in Spassky burned down, and Turgenev returned to his homeland, but already in 1840 he went abroad again, visiting Germany, Italy and Austria. Impressed by his meeting with a girl in Frankfurt am Main, Turgenev later wrote the story “Spring Waters.” In 1841, Ivan returned to Lutovinovo.

At the beginning of 1842, he submitted a request to Moscow University for admission to the exam for the degree of Master of Philosophy, but at that time there was no full-time professor of philosophy at the university, and his request was rejected. Unable to find a job in Moscow, Turgenev satisfactorily passed the exam for a master's degree at St. Petersburg University and wrote a dissertation for the literature department. But by this time, the craving for scientific activity had cooled, and literary creativity began to attract more and more. Having refused to defend his dissertation, he served until 1844 with the rank of collegiate secretary in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In 1843, Turgenev wrote the poem “Parasha”. Not really hoping for a positive review, he nevertheless took the copy to V.G. Belinsky. Belinsky praised Parasha, publishing his review in Otechestvennye zapiski two months later. From that time on, their acquaintance began, which later grew into a strong friendship; Turgenev was even godfather to Belinsky’s son, Vladimir. The poem was published in the spring of 1843 as a separate book under the initials “T. L." (Turgenev-Lutovinov). In the 1840s, in addition to Pletnev and Belinsky, Turgenev met with A. A. Fet.

In November 1843, Turgenev created the poem “Foggy Morning,” which was set to music over the years by several composers, including A. F. Gedicke and G. L. Catuar. The most famous, however, is the romance version, originally published under the signature “Music of Abaza”; its affiliation with V.V. Abaza, E.A. Abaza or Yu.F. Abaza has not been definitively established. After its publication, the poem was perceived as a reflection of Turgenev's love for Pauline Viardot, whom he met at this time.

In 1844, the poem “Pop” was written, which the writer himself characterized rather as fun, devoid of any “deep and significant ideas.” Nevertheless, the poem attracted public interest for its anti-clerical nature. The poem was truncated by Russian censorship, but was published in its entirety abroad.

In 1846, the stories “Breter” and “Three Portraits” were published. In “The Breter,” which became Turgenev’s second story, the writer tried to imagine the struggle between Lermontov’s influence and the desire to discredit posturing. The plot for his third story, “Three Portraits,” was drawn from the Lutovinov family chronicle.

Creativity flourishes

Since 1847, Ivan Turgenev participated in the transformed Sovremennik, where he became close to N. A. Nekrasov and P. V. Annenkov. The magazine published his first feuilleton, “Modern Notes,” and began publishing the first chapters of “Notes of a Hunter.” In the very first issue of Sovremennik, the story “Khor and Kalinich” was published, which opened countless editions of the famous book. The subtitle “From the Notes of a Hunter” was added by editor I. I. Panaev to attract the attention of readers to the story. The success of the story was enormous, and this led

Turgenev came up with the idea of ​​writing a number of others of the same kind. According to Turgenev, “Notes of a Hunter” was the fulfillment of his Hannibal oath to fight to the end against the enemy whom he had hated since childhood. “This enemy had a certain image, bore a well-known name: this enemy was serfdom.” To fulfill his intention, Turgenev decided to leave Russia. “I could not,” Turgenev wrote, “breathe the same air, remain close to what I hated. I needed to move away from my enemy so that from my very distance I could attack him more strongly.”

In 1847, Turgenev and Belinsky went abroad and in 1848 lived in Paris, where he witnessed revolutionary events. As an eyewitness to the killing of hostages, attacks, barricades of the February French Revolution, he forever endured a deep disgust for revolutions in general. A little later, he became close to A.I. Herzen and fell in love with Ogarev’s wife N.A. Tuchkova.

Dramaturgy

The late 1840s - early 1850s became the time of Turgenev's most intense activity in the field of drama and a time of reflection on issues of history and theory of drama. In 1848 he wrote such plays as “Where it is thin, there it breaks” and “Freeloader”, in 1849 - “Breakfast at the Leader” and “Bachelor”, in 1850 - “A Month in the Country”, in 1851 - m - “Provincial”. Of these, “Freeloader”, “Bachelor”, “Provincial Woman” and “A Month in the Country” enjoyed success thanks to excellent stage performances. The success of “The Bachelor” was especially dear to him, which became possible largely thanks to the performing skills of A.E. Martynov, who played in four of his plays. Turgenev formulated his views on the situation of Russian theater and the tasks of dramaturgy back in 1846. He believed that the crisis in the theatrical repertoire observed at that time could be overcome by the efforts of writers committed to Gogol's dramaturism. Turgenev also counted himself among the followers of Gogol the playwright.

To master the literary techniques of drama, the writer also worked on translations of Byron and Shakespeare. At the same time, he did not try to copy Shakespeare’s dramatic techniques, he only interpreted his images, and all attempts by his contemporaries-playwrights to use Shakespeare’s work as a role model and to borrow his theatrical techniques only caused Turgenev irritation. In 1847 he wrote: “Shakespeare’s shadow looms over all dramatic writers; they cannot rid themselves of memories; These unfortunates read too much and lived too little.”

1850s

In 1850, Turgenev returned to Russia, but he never saw his mother, who died that same year. Together with his brother Nikolai, he shared his mother’s large fortune and, if possible, tried to ease the hardships of the peasants he inherited.

In 1850-1852 he lived either in Russia or abroad, and saw N.V. Gogol. After Gogol's death, Turgenev wrote an obituary, which St. Petersburg censorship did not allow. The reason for her dissatisfaction was that, as the chairman of the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee M. N. Musin-Pushkin put it, “it is criminal to speak so enthusiastically about such a writer.” Then Ivan Sergeevich sent the article to Moscow, V.P. Botkin, who published it in Moskovskie Vedomosti. The authorities saw a rebellion in the text, and the author was placed in a moving house, where he spent a month. On May 18, Turgenev was exiled to his native village, and only thanks to the efforts of Count A.K. Tolstoy, two years later the writer again received the right to live in the capitals.

There is an opinion that the real reason for the exile was not the seditious obituary of Gogol, but the excessive radicalism of Turgenev’s views, manifested in sympathy for Belinsky, suspiciously frequent trips abroad, sympathetic stories about serfs, and a laudatory review of Turgenev by the emigrant Herzen. The enthusiastic tone of the article about Gogol only filled the gendarmerie's patience, becoming an external reason for punishment, the meaning of which was thought out by the authorities in advance. Turgenev feared that his arrest and exile would interfere with the publication of the first edition of Notes of a Hunter, but his fears were not justified - in August 1852 the book passed censorship and was published.

However, the censor Lvov, who allowed “Notes of a Hunter” to be published, was, by personal order of Nicholas I, dismissed from service and deprived of his pension. Russian censorship also imposed a ban on the re-publication of “Notes of a Hunter,” explaining this step by the fact that Turgenev, on the one hand, poeticized the serfs, and on the other hand, depicted “that these peasants are oppressed, that the landowners behave indecently and It’s illegal... finally, for a peasant to live more freely.”

During his exile in Spassky, Turgenev went hunting, read books, wrote stories, played chess, listened to Beethoven’s “Coriolanus” performed by A.P. Tyutcheva and her sister, who lived in Spassky at that time, and from time to time was subjected to raids by the police officer .

In 1852, while still in exile in Spassky-Lutovinovo, he wrote the now textbook story “Mumu”. Most of the “Notes of a Hunter” were created by the writer in Germany. “Notes of a Hunter” was published in Paris in a separate edition in 1854, although at the beginning of the Crimean War this publication was in the nature of anti-Russian propaganda, and Turgenev was forced to publicly express his protest against the poor quality French translation by Ernest Charrière. After the death of Nicholas I, four of the writer’s most significant works were published one after another: “Rudin” (1856), “The Noble Nest” (1859), “On the Eve” (1860) and “Fathers and Sons” (1862). The first two were published in Nekrasov’s Sovremennik, the other two were published in M. N. Katkov’s Russky Vestnik.

Employees of Sovremennik I. S. Turgenev, N. A. Nekrasov, I. I. Panaev, M. N. Longinov, V. P. Gaevsky, D. V. Grigorovich sometimes gathered in the circle of “warlocks” organized by A. V. Druzhinin. The humorous improvisations of the “warlocks” sometimes went beyond censorship, so they had to be published abroad. Later, Turgenev took part in the activities of the “Society for Benefiting Needy Writers and Scientists” (Literary Fund), founded on the initiative of the same A.V. Druzhinin. From the end of 1856, the writer collaborated with the magazine “Library for Reading,” published under the editorship of A. V. Druzhinin. But his editorship did not bring the expected success to the publication, and Turgenev, who in 1856 hoped for close magazine success, in 1861 called the “Library,” edited by A. F. Pisemsky by that time, “a dead hole.”

In the fall of 1855, Turgenev's circle of friends was replenished with Leo Tolstoy. In September of the same year, Tolstoy’s story “Cutting the Forest” was published in Sovremennik with a dedication to I. S. Turgenev.

1860s

Turgenev took an active part in the discussion of the upcoming Peasant Reform, participated in the development of various collective letters, draft addresses addressed to Emperor Alexander II, protests, etc. From the first months of publication of Herzen’s “Bell,” Turgenev was his active collaborator. He himself did not write for Kolokol, but helped in collecting materials and preparing them for publication. An equally important role of Turgenev was to mediate between Herzen and those correspondents from Russia who, for various reasons, did not want to be in direct relations with the disgraced London emigrant. In addition, Turgenev sent detailed review letters to Herzen, information from which, without the author’s signature, was also published in Kolokol. At the same time, Turgenev every time spoke out against the harsh tone of Herzen’s materials and excessive criticism of government decisions: “Please don’t scold Alexander Nikolayevich, - otherwise he is already cruelly scolded by all the reactionaries in St. Petersburg, - why bother him like that from both sides , - this way he will probably lose his spirit.”

In 1860, Sovremennik published an article by N. A. Dobrolyubov, “When will the real day come?”, in which the critic spoke very flatteringly about the new novel “On the Eve” and Turgenev’s work in general. Nevertheless, Turgenev was not satisfied with Dobrolyubov’s far-reaching conclusions that he made after reading the novel. Dobrolyubov connected the idea of ​​Turgenev’s work with the events of the approaching revolutionary transformation of Russia, which the liberal Turgenev could not reconcile with. Dobrolyubov wrote: “Then a complete, sharply and vividly outlined image of the Russian Insarov will appear in literature. And we won’t have to wait long for him: this is guaranteed by the feverish, painful impatience with which we await his appearance in life. This day will finally come! And, in any case, the eve is not far from the next day: just some night separates them!...” The writer gave Nekrasov an ultimatum: either he, Turgenev, or Dobrolyubov. Nekrasov preferred Dobrolyubov. After this, Turgenev left Sovremennik and stopped communicating with Nekrasov, and subsequently Dobrolyubov became one of the prototypes for the image of Bazarov in the novel Fathers and Sons.

Turgenev gravitated towards the circle of Westernized writers who professed the principles of “pure art”, opposed to the tendentious creativity of the common revolutionaries: P. V. Annenkov, V. P. Botkin, D. V. Grigorovich, A. V. Druzhinin. For a short time Leo Tolstoy also joined this circle. For some time, Tolstoy lived in Turgenev’s apartment. After Tolstoy’s marriage to S.A. Bers, Turgenev found a close relative in Tolstoy, but even before the wedding, in May 1861, when both prose writers were visiting A.A. Fet on the Stepanovo estate, a serious quarrel occurred between them, almost which ended in a duel and spoiled the relationship between the writers for 17 long years. For some time, the writer developed complex relationships with Fet himself, as well as with some other contemporaries - F. M. Dostoevsky, I. A. Goncharov.

In 1862, good relations with former friends of Turgenev’s youth, A.I. Herzen and M.A. Bakunin, began to become complicated. From July 1, 1862 to February 15, 1863, Herzen’s “Bell” published a series of articles “Ends and Beginnings” consisting of eight letters. Without naming the addressee of Turgenev’s letters, Herzen defended his understanding of the historical development of Russia, which, in his opinion, should move along the path of peasant socialism. Herzen contrasted peasant Russia with bourgeois Western Europe, whose revolutionary potential he considered already exhausted. Turgenev objected to Herzen in private letters, insisting on the commonality of historical development for different states and peoples.

At the end of 1862, Turgenev was involved in the trial of the 32 in the case of “persons accused of having relations with London propagandists.” After the authorities ordered an immediate appearance at the Senate, Turgenev decided to write a letter to the sovereign, trying to convince him of the loyalty of his convictions, “completely independent, but conscientious.” He asked for the interrogation points to be sent to him in Paris. In the end, he was forced to go to Russia in 1864 for Senate interrogation, where he managed to avert all suspicions from himself. The Senate found him not guilty. Turgenev’s appeal personally to Emperor Alexander II caused Herzen’s bilious reaction in The Bell. Much later, this moment in the relationship between the two writers was used by V.I. Lenin to illustrate the difference between the liberal vacillations of Turgenev and Herzen: “When the liberal Turgenev wrote a private letter to Alexander II with assurance of his loyal feelings and donated two gold pieces for the soldiers wounded during the pacification of the Polish uprising , “The Bell” wrote about “the gray-haired Magdalene (masculine), who wrote to the sovereign that she did not know sleep, tormented, that the sovereign did not know about the repentance that had befallen her.” And Turgenev immediately recognized himself.” But Turgenev’s hesitation between tsarism and revolutionary democracy manifested itself in another way.

In 1863, Turgenev settled in Baden-Baden. The writer actively participated in the cultural life of Western Europe, establishing acquaintances with the greatest writers of Germany, France and England, promoting Russian literature abroad and introducing Russian readers to the best works of contemporary Western authors. Among his acquaintances or correspondents were Friedrich Bodenstedt, William Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Henry James, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Charles Saint-Beuve, Hippolyte Taine, Prosper Mérimée, Ernest Renan, Théophile Gautier, Edmond Goncourt, Emile Zola, Anatole France , Guy de Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet, Gustave Flaubert. Since 1874, the famous bachelor “dinners of the five” - Flaubert, Edmond Goncourt, Daudet, Zola and Turgenev - were held in the Parisian restaurants of Riche or Pellet. The idea belonged to Flaubert, but Turgenev was given the main role in them. Luncheons took place once a month. They raised various topics - about the features of literature, about the structure of the French language, told stories and simply enjoyed delicious food. Dinners were held not only at Parisian restaurateurs, but also at the homes of the writers themselves.

I. S. Turgenev acted as a consultant and editor for foreign translators of Russian writers, wrote prefaces and notes to translations of Russian writers into European languages, as well as to Russian translations of works by famous European writers. He translated Western writers into Russian and Russian writers and poets into French and German. This is how translations of Flaubert’s works “Herodias” and “The Tale of St. Julian the Merciful" for Russian readers and Pushkin's works for French readers. For some time, Turgenev became the most famous and most read Russian author in Europe, where criticism ranked him among the first writers of the century. In 1878, at the international literary congress in Paris, the writer was elected vice-president. On June 18, 1879, he was awarded the title of honorary doctor of the University of Oxford, despite the fact that the university had not given such an honor to any fiction writer before him.

Despite living abroad, all Turgenev’s thoughts were still connected with Russia. He wrote the novel “Smoke” (1867), which caused a lot of controversy in Russian society. According to the author, everyone scolded the novel: “both red and white, and above, and below, and from the side - especially from the side.”

In 1868, Turgenev became a permanent contributor to the liberal magazine “Bulletin of Europe” and broke ties with M. N. Katkov. The breakup did not go easily - the writer began to be persecuted in the Russky Vestnik and in the Moskovskie Vedomosti. The attacks especially intensified at the end of the 1870s, when, regarding the ovation that Turgenev received, the Katkovsky newspaper assured that the writer was “tumbling” in front of progressive youth.

1870s

The fruit of the writer’s thoughts in the 1870s was the largest of his novels in terms of volume, Nov (1877), which was also criticized. So, for example, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin regarded this novel as a service to the autocracy.

Turgenev was friends with the Minister of Education A.V. Golovnin, with the Milyutin brothers (comrade of the Minister of Internal Affairs and Minister of War), N.I. Turgenev, and was closely acquainted with the Minister of Finance M.H. Reitern. At the end of the 1870s, Turgenev became closer friends with leaders of revolutionary emigration from Russia; his circle of acquaintances included P. L. Lavrov, Kropotkin, G. A. Lopatin and many others. Among other revolutionaries, he put German Lopatin above everyone else, admiring his intelligence, courage and moral strength.

In April 1878, Leo Tolstoy invited Turgenev to forget all the misunderstandings between them, to which Turgenev happily agreed. Friendly relations and correspondence were resumed. Turgenev explained the significance of modern Russian literature, including Tolstoy's work, to Western readers. In general, Ivan Turgenev played a big role in promoting Russian literature abroad.

However, Dostoevsky in his novel “Demons” portrayed Turgenev as the “great writer Karmazinov” - a loud, petty, well-worn and practically mediocre writer who considers himself a genius and is holed up abroad. Such an attitude towards Turgenev by the always needy Dostoevsky was caused, among other things, by Turgenev’s secure position in his noble life and the highest literary fees for those times: “To Turgenev for his “Noble Nest” (I finally read it. Extremely well) Katkov himself (from whom I I ask for 100 rubles per sheet) I gave 4000 rubles, that is, 400 rubles per sheet. My friend! I know very well that I write worse than Turgenev, but not too much worse, and finally, I hope to write not worse at all. Why am I, with my needs, taking only 100 rubles, and Turgenev, who has 2000 souls, 400 each?”

Turgenev, without hiding his hostility towards Dostoevsky, in a letter to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in 1882 (after Dostoevsky’s death) also did not spare his opponent, calling him “the Russian Marquis de Sade.”

In 1880, the writer took part in Pushkin celebrations dedicated to the opening of the first monument to the poet in Moscow, organized by the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.

Last years

The last years of Turgenev's life became for him the pinnacle of fame both in Russia, where the writer again became everyone's favorite, and in Europe, where the best critics of the time (I. Taine, E. Renan, G. Brandes, etc.) ranked him among the first writers of the century. His visits to Russia in 1878-1881 were real triumphs. All the more alarming in 1882 was the news of a severe exacerbation of his usual gouty pain. In the spring of 1882, the first signs of the disease were discovered, which soon turned out to be fatal for Turgenev. With temporary relief from the pain, he continued to work and a few months before his death he published the first part of “Poems in Prose” - a cycle of lyrical miniatures, which became his kind of farewell to life, homeland and art. The book opened with the prose poem “Village”, and ended with “Russian Language” - a lyrical hymn in which the author invested his faith in the great destiny of his country:

Parisian doctors Charcot and Jacquot diagnosed the writer with angina pectoris; Soon she was joined by intercostal neuralgia. The last time Turgenev was in Spassky-Lutovinovo was in the summer of 1881. The sick writer spent the winters in Paris, and in the summer he was transported to Bougival to the Viardot estate.

By January 1883 the pain had become so severe that he could not sleep without morphine. He had surgery to remove a neuroma in the lower abdomen, but the surgery helped little because it did not relieve the pain in the thoracic region of the spine. The disease progressed; in March and April the writer suffered so much that those around him began to notice momentary cloudings of reason, caused in part by taking morphine. The writer was fully aware of his imminent death and came to terms with the consequences of the disease, which deprived him of the ability to walk or simply stand.

Death and funeral

The confrontation between " an unimaginably painful illness and an unimaginably strong body"(P.V. Annenkov) ended on August 22 (September 3), 1883 in Bougival near Paris. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev died from myxosarcoma (Muho Sarcoma) (cancerous lesion of the bones of the spine). Doctor S.P. Botkin testified that the true cause of death was clarified only after an autopsy, during which his brain was also weighed by physiologists. As it turned out, among those whose brains were weighed, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev had the largest brain (2012 grams, which is almost 600 grams more than the average weight).

Turgenev's death was a great shock for his admirers, resulting in a very impressive funeral. The funeral was preceded by mourning celebrations in Paris, which were attended by over four hundred people. Among them were at least a hundred Frenchmen: Edmond Abou, Jules Simon, Emile Ogier, Emile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Juliette Adan, artist Alfred Dieudonnet, composer Jules Massenet. Ernest Renan addressed the mourners with a heartfelt speech. In accordance with the will of the deceased, on September 27, his body was brought to St. Petersburg.

Even from the border station of Verzhbolovo, memorial services were held at stops. On the platform of the St. Petersburg Warsaw Station there was a solemn meeting between the coffin and the body of the writer. Senator A.F. Koni recalled the funeral at the Volkovskoye cemetery:

There were some misunderstandings. The day after the funeral of Turgenev’s body in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on Daru Street in Paris on September 19, the famous emigrant populist P. L. Lavrov published a letter in the Paris newspaper Justice, edited by the future socialist Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, in which he reported that I. S. Turgenev, on his own initiative, transferred 500 francs to Lavrov annually for three years to facilitate the publication of the revolutionary emigrant newspaper “Forward”.

Russian liberals were outraged by this news, considering it a provocation. The conservative press represented by M. N. Katkov, on the contrary, took advantage of Lavrov’s message to posthumously persecute Turgenev in the Russky Vestnik and Moskovskiye Vedomosti in order to prevent the honoring in Russia of the deceased writer, whose body “without any publicity, with special caution” should was to arrive in the capital from Paris for burial. The trace of Turgenev's ashes greatly worried the Minister of Internal Affairs D. A. Tolstoy, who feared spontaneous rallies. According to the editor of Vestnik Evropy, M. M. Stasyulevich, who accompanied Turgenev’s body, the precautions taken by officials were as inappropriate as if he were accompanying the Nightingale the Robber, and not the body of the great writer.

Personal life

The first romantic interest of young Turgenev was falling in love with the daughter of Princess Shakhovskaya, Ekaterina (1815-1836), a young poetess. The estates of their parents in the Moscow region bordered, they often exchanged visits. He was 15, she was 19. In letters to her son, Varvara Turgenev called Ekaterina Shakhovskaya a “poet” and a “villain”, since Sergei Nikolaevich himself, Ivan Turgenev’s father, could not resist the charms of the young princess, to whom the girl reciprocated, which broke the heart of the future writer . The episode much later, in 1860, was reflected in the story “First Love,” in which the writer endowed some of the features of Katya Shakhovskaya with the heroine of the story, Zinaida Zasekina.

Henri Troyat, "Ivan Turgenev"

Turgenev's story at dinner at G. Flaubert's

“My whole life is permeated with the feminine principle. Neither a book nor anything else can replace a woman for me... How can I explain this? I believe that only love causes such a flowering of the whole being that nothing else can give. And what do you think? Listen, in my youth I had a mistress - a miller's wife from the outskirts of St. Petersburg. I met her when I went hunting. She was very pretty - blonde with radiant eyes, the kind we see quite often. She didn't want to accept anything from me. And one day she said: “You should give me a gift!” - "What do you want?" - “Bring me soap!” I brought her soap. She took it and disappeared. She returned flushed and said, holding out her fragrant hands to me: “Kiss my hands as you kiss them to the ladies in St. Petersburg drawing rooms!” I threw myself on my knees in front of her... There is no moment in my life that could compare with this!”

In 1841, during his return to Lutovinovo, Ivan became interested in the seamstress Dunyasha (Avdotya Ermolaevna Ivanova). A romance began between the young couple, which ended in the girl’s pregnancy. Ivan Sergeevich immediately expressed a desire to marry her. However, his mother made a serious scandal about this, after which he went to St. Petersburg. Turgenev's mother, having learned about Avdotya's pregnancy, hastily sent her to Moscow to her parents, where Pelageya was born on April 26, 1842. Dunyasha was married off, leaving her daughter in an ambiguous position. Turgenev officially recognized the child only in 1857.

Soon after the episode with Avdotya Ivanova, Turgenev met Tatyana Bakunina (1815-1871), the sister of the future emigrant revolutionary M.A. Bakunin. Returning to Moscow after his stay in Spassky, he stopped at the Bakunin estate Premukhino. The winter of 1841-1842 was spent in close communication with the circle of Bakunin brothers and sisters. All of Turgenev's friends - N.V. Stankevich, V.G. Belinsky and V.P. Botkin - were in love with Mikhail Bakunin's sisters, Lyubov, Varvara and Alexandra.

Tatyana was three years older than Ivan. Like all young Bakunins, she was passionate about German philosophy and perceived her relationships with others through the prism of Fichte’s idealistic concept. She wrote letters to Turgenev in German, full of lengthy reasoning and self-analysis, despite the fact that the young people lived in the same house, and she also expected from Turgenev an analysis of the motives of her own actions and reciprocal feelings. “The ‘philosophical’ novel,” as G. A. Byaly noted, “in the vicissitudes of which the entire younger generation of Premukha’s nest took an active part, lasted several months.” Tatyana was truly in love. Ivan Sergeevich did not remain completely indifferent to the love he awakened. He wrote several poems (the poem “Parasha” was also inspired by his communication with Bakunina) and a story dedicated to this sublimely ideal, mostly literary and epistolary hobby. But he could not respond with serious feelings.

Among the writer’s other fleeting hobbies, there were two more that played a certain role in his work. In the 1850s, a fleeting romance broke out with a distant cousin, eighteen-year-old Olga Alexandrovna Turgeneva. The love was mutual, and the writer was thinking about marriage in 1854, the prospect of which at the same time frightened him. Olga later served as the prototype for the image of Tatyana in the novel “Smoke”. Turgenev was also indecisive with Maria Nikolaevna Tolstoy. Ivan Sergeevich wrote about Leo Tolstoy’s sister to P.V. Annenkov: “His sister is one of the most attractive creatures I have ever met. Sweet, smart, simple - I couldn’t take my eyes off her. In my old age (I turned 36 on the fourth day) - I almost fell in love.” For the sake of Turgenev, twenty-four-year-old M.N. Tolstaya had already left her husband; she mistook the writer’s attention to herself for true love. But this time Turgenev limited himself to a platonic hobby, and Maria Nikolaevna served him as a prototype for Verochka from the story “Faust”.

In the fall of 1843, Turgenev first saw Pauline Viardot on the stage of the opera house, when the great singer came on tour to St. Petersburg. Turgenev was 25 years old, Viardot was 22 years old. Then, while hunting, he met Polina’s husband, the director of the Italian Theater in Paris, a famous critic and art critic, Louis Viardot, and on November 1, 1843, he was introduced to Polina herself. Among the mass of fans, she did not particularly single out Turgenev, who was better known as an avid hunter rather than a writer. And when her tour ended, Turgenev, together with the Viardot family, left for Paris against the will of his mother, still unknown to Europe and without money. And this despite the fact that everyone considered him a rich man. But this time his extremely cramped financial situation was explained precisely by his disagreement with his mother, one of the richest women in Russia and the owner of a huge agricultural and industrial empire.

For affection for " damn gypsy“His mother didn’t give him money for three years. During these years, his lifestyle bore little resemblance to the stereotype of the life of a “rich Russian” that had developed about him. In November 1845, he returned to Russia, and in January 1847, having learned about Viardot’s tour in Germany, he left the country again: he went to Berlin, then to London, Paris, a tour of France and again to St. Petersburg. Without an official marriage, Turgenev lived in the Viardot family " on the edge of someone else's nest", as he himself said. Polina Viardot raised Turgenev's illegitimate daughter. In the early 1860s, the Viardot family settled in Baden-Baden, and with them Turgenev (“Villa Tourgueneff”). Thanks to the Viardot family and Ivan Turgenev, their villa became an interesting musical and artistic center. The war of 1870 forced the Viardot family to leave Germany and move to Paris, where the writer also moved.

The writer's last love was the actress of the Alexandrinsky Theater Maria Savina. Their meeting took place in 1879, when the young actress was 25 years old and Turgenev was 61 years old. The actress at that time played the role of Verochka in Turgenev’s play “A Month in the Village.” The role was played so vividly that the writer himself was amazed. After this performance, he went to the actress backstage with a large bouquet of roses and exclaimed: “ Did I really write this Verochka?!" Ivan Turgenev fell in love with her, which he openly admitted. The rarity of their meetings was compensated by regular correspondence, which lasted four years. Despite Turgenev's sincere relationship, for Maria he was more of a good friend. She was planning to marry someone else, but the marriage never took place. Savina’s marriage to Turgenev was also not destined to come true - the writer died in the circle of the Viardot family.

"Turgenev girls"

Turgenev's personal life was not entirely successful. Having lived for 38 years in close contact with the Viardot family, the writer felt deeply lonely. Under these conditions, Turgenev’s image of love was formed, but love not entirely characteristic of his melancholy creative manner. There is almost no happy ending in his works, and the last chord is often sad. But nevertheless, almost none of the Russian writers paid so much attention to the depiction of love; no one idealized a woman to such an extent as Ivan Turgenev.

The characters of the female characters in his works of the 1850s - 1880s - the images of integral, pure, selfless, morally strong heroines in total formed the literary phenomenon " Turgenev's girl" - a typical heroine of his works. These are Liza in the story “The Diary of an Extra Man”, Natalya Lasunskaya in the novel “Rudin”, Asya in the story of the same name, Vera in the story “Faust”, Elizaveta Kalitina in the novel “The Noble Nest”, Elena Stakhova in the novel “On the Eve”, Marianna Sinetskaya in novel "Nov" and others.

L.N. Tolstoy, noting the merits of the writer, said that Turgenev wrote amazing portraits of women, and that Tolstoy himself later observed Turgenev’s women in life.

Family

Turgenev never started his own family. The writer's daughter from seamstress Avdotya Ermolaevna Ivanova Pelageya Ivanovna Turgeneva, married to Brewer (1842-1919), from the age of eight was raised in the family of Pauline Viardot in France, where Turgenev changed her name from Pelageya to Polynet, which was more pleasant to his literary ear - Polinet Turgeneva . Ivan Sergeevich arrived in France only six years later, when his daughter was already fourteen. Polinette almost forgot the Russian language and spoke exclusively French, which touched her father. At the same time, he was upset that the girl had a difficult relationship with Viardot herself. The girl did not love her father's beloved, and soon this led to the girl being sent to a private boarding school. When Turgenev next came to France, he took his daughter from the boarding school, and they moved in together, and a governess from England, Innis, was invited for Polynet.

At the age of seventeen, Polynet met a young businessman Gaston Brewer, who made a pleasant impression on Ivan Turgenev, and he agreed to his daughter’s marriage. As a dowry, my father gave a considerable amount for those times - 150 thousand francs. The girl married Brewer, who soon went bankrupt, after which Polynette, with the assistance of her father, hid from her husband in Switzerland. Since Turgenev's heir was Polina Viardot, after his death his daughter found herself in a difficult financial situation. She died in 1919 at the age of 76 from cancer. Polynette's children, Georges-Albert and Jeanne, had no descendants. Georges-Albert died in 1924. Zhanna Brewer-Turgeneva never married; She lived by giving private lessons for a living, as she was fluent in five languages. She even tried herself in poetry, writing poems in French. She died in 1952 at the age of 80, and with her the family branch of the Turgenevs along the line of Ivan Sergeevich ended.

Passion for hunting

I. S. Turgenev was at one time one of the most famous hunters in Russia. The love of hunting was instilled in the future writer by his uncle Nikolai Turgenev, a recognized expert in horses and hunting dogs in the area, who raised the boy during his summer holidays in Spassky. He also taught hunting to the future writer A.I. Kupfershmidt, whom Turgenev considered his first teacher. Thanks to him, Turgenev could already call himself a gun hunter in his youth. Even Ivan’s mother, who had previously looked at hunters as slackers, became imbued with her son’s passion. Over the years, the hobby grew into a passion. It happened that he would not let go of his gun for entire seasons, walking thousands of miles across many provinces of central Russia. Turgenev said that hunting is generally characteristic of Russian people, and that Russian people have loved hunting since time immemorial.

In 1837, Turgenev met the peasant hunter Afanasy Alifanov, who later became his frequent hunting companion. The writer bought it for a thousand rubles; he settled in the forest, five miles from Spassky. Afanasy was an excellent storyteller, and Turgenev often came to sit with him over a cup of tea and listen to hunting stories. The story “About Nightingales” (1854) was recorded by the writer from the words of Alifanov. It was Afanasy who became the prototype of Ermolai from “Notes of a Hunter”. He was also known for his talent as a hunter among the writer’s friends - A. A. Fet, I. P. Borisov. When Afanasy died in 1872, Turgenev was very sorry for his old hunting companion and asked his manager to provide possible assistance to his daughter Anna.

In 1839, the writer’s mother, describing the tragic consequences of the fire that occurred in Spassky, did not forget to say: “ your gun is intact, but the dog is crazy" The fire that occurred accelerated Ivan Turgenev’s arrival in Spasskoye. In the summer of 1839, he first went hunting in the Teleginsky swamps (on the border of Bolkhovsky and Oryol districts), visited the Lebedyansk fair, which was reflected in the story “Swan” (1847). Varvara Petrovna purchased five packs of greyhounds, nine pairs of hounds and horses with saddles especially for him.

In the summer of 1843, Ivan Sergeevich lived at his dacha in Pavlovsk and also hunted a lot. That year he met Polina Viardot. The writer was introduced to her with the words: “ This is a young Russian landowner. A good hunter and a bad poet" The actress's husband, Louis, was, like Turgenev, a passionate hunter. Ivan Sergeevich invited him more than once to go hunting in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. They repeatedly went hunting with friends to the Novgorod province and Finland. And Polina Viardot gave Turgenev a beautiful and expensive yagdtash.

At the end of the 1840s, the writer lived abroad and worked on “Notes of a Hunter.” The writer spent 1852-1853 in Spassky under police supervision. But this exile did not depress him, since a hunt awaited him in the village again, and it was quite successful. And the next year he went on hunting expeditions 150 miles from Spassky, where, together with I.F. Yurasov, he hunted on the banks of the Desna. This expedition served as material for Turgenev to work on the story “A Trip to Polesie” (1857).

In August 1854, Turgenev, together with N.A. Nekrasov, came to hunt at the estate of titular adviser I.I. Maslov Osmino, after which both continued to hunt in Spassky. In the mid-1850s, Turgenev met the family of Count Tolstoy. L.N. Tolstoy's elder brother, Nikolai, also turned out to be an avid hunter and, together with Turgenev, made several hunting trips around Spassky and Nikolsko-Vyazemsky. Sometimes they were accompanied by M.N. Tolstoy’s husband, Valerian Petrovich; some traits of his character were reflected in the image of Priimkov in the story “Faust” (1855). In the summer of 1855, Turgenev did not hunt due to a cholera epidemic, but in subsequent seasons he tried to make up for lost time. Together with N.N. Tolstoy, the writer visited Pirogovo, the estate of S.N. Tolstoy, who preferred to hunt with greyhounds and had beautiful horses and dogs. Turgenev, on the other hand, preferred to hunt with a gun and a gun dog, and mainly for feathered game.

Turgenev kept a kennel of seventy hounds and sixty greyhounds. Together with N.N. Tolstoy, A.A. Fet and A.T. Alifanov, he made a number of hunting expeditions in the central Russian provinces. In 1860-1870, Turgenev mainly lived abroad. He also tried to recreate the rituals and atmosphere of Russian hunting abroad, but from all this only a distant similarity was obtained, even when he, together with Louis Viardot, managed to rent quite decent hunting grounds. In the spring of 1880, having visited Spasskoye, Turgenev made a special trip to Yasnaya Polyana with the goal of persuading L.N. Tolstoy to take part in the Pushkin celebrations. Tolstoy refused the invitation because he considered gala dinners and liberal toasts inappropriate in the face of the starving Russian peasantry. Nevertheless, Turgenev fulfilled his old dream - he hunted with Leo Tolstoy. A whole hunting circle even formed around Turgenev - N. A. Nekrasov, A. A. Fet, A. N. Ostrovsky, N. N. and L. N. Tolstoy, artist P. P. Sokolov (illustrator of “Notes of a Hunter”) . In addition, he had the opportunity to hunt with the German writer Karl Müller, as well as with representatives of the reigning houses of Russia and Germany - Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich and the Prince of Hesse.

Ivan Turgenev, with a gun on his back, walked into the Oryol, Tula, Tambov, Kursk, and Kaluga provinces. He was well acquainted with the best hunting grounds of England, France, and Germany. He wrote three specialized works devoted to hunting: “On the notes of the gun hunter of the Orenburg province S. T. Aksakov,” “Notes of the gun hunter of the Orenburg province” and “Fifty shortcomings of a gun hunter or fifty shortcomings of a pointer dog.”

Characteristics and writer's life

Biographers of Turgenev noted the unique features of his life as a writer. From his youth, he combined intelligence, education, and artistic talent with passivity, a tendency toward introspection, and indecisiveness. All together, in a bizarre way, it combined with the habits of the little baron, who had been dependent for a long time on his domineering, despotic mother. Turgenev recalled that at the University of Berlin, while studying Hegel, he could give up his studies when he needed to train his dog or set it on rats. T. N. Granovsky, who came to his apartment, found the philosophy student playing card soldiers with a serf servant (Porfiry Kudryashov). The childishness smoothed out over the years, but internal duality and immaturity of views made themselves felt for a long time: according to A. Ya. Panaeva, young Ivan wanted to be accepted both in literary society and in secular drawing rooms, while in secular society Turgenev was ashamed to admit about his literary earnings, which spoke of his false and frivolous attitude towards literature and the title of writer at that time.

The writer’s cowardice in his youth is evidenced by an episode in 1838 in Germany, when during a trip there was a fire on a ship, and the passengers miraculously managed to escape. Turgenev, who feared for his life, asked one of the sailors to save him and promised him a reward from his rich mother if he managed to fulfill his request. Other passengers testified that the young man plaintively exclaimed: “ To die so young!”, while pushing women and children away from the rescue boats. Fortunately, the shore was not far. Once on the shore, the young man was ashamed of his cowardice. Rumors of his cowardice permeated society and became the subject of ridicule. The event played a certain negative role in the subsequent life of the author and was described by Turgenev himself in the short story “Fire at Sea.”

Researchers note another character trait of Turgenev, which brought him and those around him a lot of trouble - his lack of responsibility, “all-Russian negligence” or “Oblomovism,” as E. A. Solovyov writes. Ivan Sergeevich could invite guests to his place and soon forget about it, going somewhere else on his own business; he could have promised a story to N.A. Nekrasov for the next issue of Sovremennik, or even taken an advance from A.A. Kraevsky and not delivered the promised manuscript in a timely manner. Ivan Sergeevich himself later warned the younger generation against such annoying little things. A victim of this optionality once became the Polish-Russian revolutionary Arthur Benny, who was slanderously accused in Russia of being an agent of Section III. This accusation could only be dispelled by A. I. Herzen, to whom Benny wrote a letter and asked him to convey it with the opportunity to I. S. Turgenev in London. Turgenev forgot about the letter, which had lain unsent for over two months. During this time, rumors of Benny's betrayal reached catastrophic proportions. The letter, which reached Herzen very late, could not change anything in Benny’s reputation.

The reverse side of these flaws was spiritual gentleness, breadth of nature, a certain generosity, gentleness, but his kindness had its limits. When, during his last visit to Spasskoye, he saw that the mother, who did not know how to please her beloved son, lined up all the serfs along the alley to greet the barchuk “ loud and joyful", Ivan became angry with his mother, immediately turned around and left back for St. Petersburg. They did not see each other again until her death, and even lack of money could not shake his decision. Among Turgenev's character traits, Ludwig Pietsch singled out his modesty. Abroad, where his work was still poorly known, Turgenev never boasted to those around him that in Russia he was already considered a famous writer. Having become the independent owner of his mother's inheritance, Turgenev did not show any concern for his grains and harvests. Unlike Leo Tolstoy, he did not have any mastery in him.

He calls himself " the most careless of Russian landowners" The writer did not delve into the management of his estate, entrusting it either to his uncle, or to the poet N.S. Tyutchev, or even to random people. Turgenev was very wealthy, he had no less than 20 thousand rubles a year in income from the land, but at the same time he always needed money, spending it very unscrupulously. The habits of the broad Russian gentleman made themselves felt. Turgenev's literary fees were also very significant. He was one of the highest paid writers in Russia. Each edition of “Notes of a Hunter” provided him with 2,500 rubles of net income. The right to publish his works cost 20-25 thousand rubles.

The meaning and evaluation of creativity

Extra people in the image of Turgenev

Despite the fact that the tradition of depicting “extra people” arose before Turgenev (Chatsky A.S. Griboedova, Evgeny Onegin A.S. Pushkin, Pechorin M.Yu. Lermontova, Beltov A.I. Herzen, Aduev Jr. in “Ordinary History” I. A. Goncharova), Turgenev has priority in defining this type of literary characters. The name “The Extra Man” was established after the publication of Turgenev’s story “The Diary of an Extra Man” in 1850. “Superfluous people” were, as a rule, distinguished by the general features of intellectual superiority over others and at the same time passivity, mental discord, skepticism towards the realities of the outside world, and a discrepancy between word and deed. Turgenev created a whole gallery of similar images: Chulkaturin (“The Diary of an Extra Man,” 1850), Rudin (“Rudin,” 1856), Lavretsky (“The Noble Nest,” 1859), Nezhdanov (“Nov,” 1877). Turgenev’s novels and stories “Asya”, “Yakov Pasynkov”, “Correspondence” and others are also devoted to the problem of the “superfluous person”.

The main character of “The Diary of an Extra Man” is marked by the desire to analyze all his emotions, to record the slightest shades of the state of his own soul. Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the hero notices the unnaturalness and tension of his thoughts, the lack of will: “ I analyzed myself to the last thread, compared myself with others, recalled the slightest glances, smiles, words of people... Entire days passed in this painful, fruitless work" Self-analysis, which corrodes the soul, gives the hero unnatural pleasure: “ Only after my expulsion from the Ozhogins’ house did I painfully learn how much pleasure a person can derive from the contemplation of his own misfortune" The failure of apathetic and reflective characters was even more emphasized by the images of Turgenev’s integral and strong heroines.

The result of Turgenev’s thoughts about the heroes of the Rudin and Chulkaturin type was the article “Hamlet and Don Quixote” (1859). The least “hamletic” of all Turgenev’s “superfluous people” is the hero of “The Noble Nest” Lavretsky. One of its main characters, Alexei Dmitrievich Nezhdanov, is called the “Russian Hamlet” in the novel “Nov”.

Simultaneously with Turgenev, the phenomenon of the “superfluous man” continued to be developed by I. A. Goncharov in the novel “Oblomov” (1859), N. A. Nekrasov - Agarin (“Sasha”, 1856), A. F. Pisemsky and many others. But, unlike Goncharov’s character, Turgenev’s heroes were subject to greater typification. According to the Soviet literary critic A. Lavretsky (I.M. Frenkel), “If we had all the sources for studying the 40s. If there was only one “Rudin” or one “Noble Nest” left, then it would still be possible to establish the character of the era in its specific features. According to Oblomov, we are not able to do this.”

Later, the tradition of depicting Turgenev’s “superfluous people” was ironically played up by A.P. Chekhov. The character of his story "Duel" Laevsky is a reduced and parodic version of Turgenev's superfluous man. He tells his friend von Koren: “ I'm a loser, an extra person" Von Koren agrees that Laevsky is “ chip from Rudin" At the same time, he speaks of Laevsky’s claim to be “an extra person” in a mocking tone: “ Understand this, they say, that it is not his fault that government packages lie unopened for weeks and that he himself drinks and gets others drunk, but Onegin, Pechorin and Turgenev are to blame for this, who invented a loser and an extra person" Later critics brought Rudin's character closer to the character of Turgenev himself.

Turgenev on stage

By the mid-1850s, Turgenev became disillusioned with his calling as a playwright. Critics declared his plays unstageable. The author seemed to agree with the opinion of the critics and stopped writing for the Russian stage, but in 1868-1869 he wrote four French operetta librettos for Pauline Viardot, intended for production at the Baden-Baden theater. L.P. Grossman noted the validity of many critics’ reproaches against Turgenev’s plays for the lack of movement in them and the predominance of the conversational element. Nevertheless, he pointed out the paradoxical vitality of Turgenev's productions on stage. Ivan Sergeevich's plays have not left the repertoire of European and Russian theaters for over one hundred and sixty years. Famous Russian performers played in them: P. A. Karatygin, V. V. Samoilov, V. V. Samoilova (Samoilova 2nd), A. E. Martynov, V. I. Zhivokini, M. P. Sadovsky, S. V. Shumsky, V. N. Davydov, K. A. Varlamov, M. G. Savina, G. N. Fedotova, V. F. Komissarzhevskaya, K. S. Stanislavsky, V. I. Kachalov, M. N. Ermolova and others.

Turgenev the playwright was widely recognized in Europe. His plays were successful on the stages of the Antoine Theater in Paris, the Vienna Burgtheater, the Munich Chamber Theater, Berlin, Königsberg and other German theaters. Turgenev's dramaturgy was in the selected repertoire of outstanding Italian tragedians: Ermete Novelli, Tommaso Salvini, Ernesto Rossi, Ermete Zacconi, Austrian, German and French actors Adolf von Sonnenthal, Andre Antoine, Charlotte Voltaire and Franziska Elmenreich.

Of all his plays, the greatest success was A Month in the Country. The performance debuted in 1872. At the beginning of the 20th century, the play was staged at the Moscow Art Theater by K. S. Stanislavsky and I. M. Moskvin. The set designer for the production and the author of the sketches for the costumes of the characters was the world art artist M. V. Dobuzhinsky. This play has not left the stage of Russian theaters to this day. Even during the author’s lifetime, theaters began to stage his novels and stories with varying degrees of success: “The Noble Nest”, “King Lear of the Steppes”, “Spring Waters”. This tradition is continued by modern theaters.

XIX century. Turgenev in the assessments of his contemporaries

Contemporaries gave Turgenev's work a very high rating. Critics V. G. Belinsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov, D. I. Pisarev, A. V. Druzhinin, P. V. Annenkov, Apollon Grigoriev, V. P. Botkin, N. N. made a critical analysis of his works. Strakhov, V. P. Burenin, K. S. Aksakov, I. S. Aksakov, N. K. Mikhailovsky, K. N. Leontyev, A. S. Suvorin, P. L. Lavrov, S. S. Dudyshkin, P. N. Tkachev, N. I. Solovyov, M. A. Antonovich, M. N. Longinov, M. F. De-Pule, N. V. Shelgunov, N. G. Chernyshevsky and many others.

Thus, V. G. Belinsky noted the writer’s extraordinary skill in depicting Russian nature. According to N.V. Gogol, Turgenev had the most talent in Russian literature of that time. N.A. Dobrolyubov wrote that as soon as Turgenev touched upon any issue or new aspect of social relations in his story, these problems arose in the consciousness of an educated society, appearing before everyone’s eyes. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin stated that Turgenev’s literary activity was of equal importance to society as the activities of Nekrasov, Belinsky and Dobrolyubov. According to the Russian literary critic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, S. A. Vengerov, the writer managed to write so realistically that it was difficult to grasp the line between literary fiction and real life. His novels were not only read, but his heroes were imitated in life. In each of his major works there is a character in whose mouth the subtle and apt wit of the writer himself is put.

Turgenev was also well known in contemporary Western Europe. His works were translated into German back in the 1850s, and in the 1870s-1880s he became the most beloved and most read Russian writer in Germany, and German critics rated him as one of the most significant modern short story writers. Turgenev's first translators were August Wiedert, August Boltz and Paul Fuchs. The translator of many of Turgenev’s works into German, the German writer F. Bodenstedt, in the introduction to “Russian Fragments” (1861), argued that Turgenev’s works are equal to the works of the best modern short story writers in England, Germany and France. Chancellor of the German Empire Clovis Hohenlohe (1894-1900), who called Ivan Turgenev the best candidate for the post of Prime Minister of Russia, spoke of the writer as follows: “ Today I spoke with the smartest man in Russia».

Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter” were popular in France. Guy de Maupassant called the writer " great man" And " a brilliant novelist", and Georges Sand wrote to Turgenev: " Teacher! We all must go through your school" His work was also well known in English literary circles - “Notes of a Hunter”, “The Noble Nest”, “On the Eve” and “New” were translated in England. Western readers were captivated by the moral purity in the depiction of love, the image of a Russian woman (Elena Stakhova); I was struck by the figure of the militant democrat Bazarov. The writer managed to show European society the true Russia, he introduced foreign readers to the Russian peasant, to the Russian commoners and revolutionaries, to the Russian intelligentsia and revealed the image of the Russian woman. Thanks to Turgenev’s work, foreign readers absorbed the great traditions of the Russian realistic school.

Leo Tolstoy gave the following characterization to the writer in a letter to A.N. Pypin (January 1884): “Turgenev is a wonderful person (not very deep, very weak, but a kind, good person), who always says exactly what he thinks and feels."

Turgenev in the encyclopedic dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron

According to the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia, “Notes of a Hunter,” in addition to the usual readership success, played a certain historical role. The book made a strong impression even on the heir to the throne, Alexander II, who a few years later carried out a number of reforms to abolish serfdom in Russia. Many representatives of the ruling classes were also impressed by the Notes. The book carried a social protest, denouncing serfdom, but serfdom itself was directly touched upon in “Notes of a Hunter” with restraint and caution. The content of the book was not fictitious; it convinced readers that people should not be deprived of the most basic human rights. But, in addition to protest, the stories also had artistic value, carrying a soft and poetic flavor. According to the literary critic S. A. Vengerov, the landscape painting of “Notes of a Hunter” became one of the best in Russian literature of that time. All the best qualities of Turgenev’s talent were vividly expressed in his essays. " The great, powerful, truthful and free Russian language“, to which the last of his “Poems in Prose” (1878-1882) is dedicated, received its most noble and elegant expression in “Notes”.

In the novel “Rudin” the author managed to successfully portray the generation of the 1840s. To some extent, Rudin himself is the image of the famous Hegelian agitator M.A. Bakunin, whom Belinsky spoke of as a person “ with blush on your cheeks and no blood in your heart. Rudin appeared in an era when society dreamed of “business.” The author's version of the novel was not passed by the censors due to the episode of Rudin's death at the June barricades, and therefore was understood by critics in a very one-sided way. According to the author, Rudin was a richly gifted man with noble intentions, but at the same time he was completely lost in the face of reality; he knew how to passionately appeal and captivate others, but at the same time he himself was completely devoid of passion and temperament. The hero of the novel has become a household name for those people whose words do not agree with deeds. The writer generally did not particularly spare his favorite heroes, even the best representatives of the Russian noble class of the mid-19th century. He often emphasized passivity and lethargy in their characters, as well as traits of moral helplessness. This showed the realism of the writer, who depicted life as it is.

But if in “Rudin” Turgenev spoke only against the idle chattering people of the generation of the forties, then in “The Noble Nest” his criticism fell against his entire generation; without the slightest bitterness he gave preference to young forces. In the person of the heroine of this novel, a simple Russian girl, Lisa, a collective image of many women of that time is shown, when the meaning of a woman’s whole life was reduced to love, having failed in which, a woman was deprived of any purpose of existence. Turgenev foresaw the emergence of a new type of Russian woman, which he placed at the center of his next novel. Russian society of that time lived on the eve of radical social and state changes. And the heroine of Turgenev’s novel “On the Eve”, Elena, became the personification of the vague desire for something good and new, characteristic of the first years of the reform era, without a clear idea of ​​​​this new and good. It is no coincidence that the novel was called “On the Eve” - in it Shubin ends his elegy with the question: “ When will our time come? When will we have people?"To which his interlocutor expresses hope for the best: " Give it time,” answered Uvar Ivanovich, “they will" On the pages of Sovremennik, the novel received an enthusiastic assessment in Dobrolyubov’s article “When will the real day come.”

In the next novel, “Fathers and Sons,” one of the most characteristic features of Russian literature of that time was most fully expressed - the closest connection of literature with the real currents of public sentiment. Turgenev managed better than other writers to capture the moment of unanimity of public consciousness, which in the second half of the 1850s buried the old Nicholas era with its lifeless reactionary isolation, and the turning point of the era: the subsequent confusion of innovators who singled out from their midst moderate representatives of the older generation with their vague hopes for a better future - for the “fathers”, and for the younger generation, thirsty for fundamental changes in the social order - the “children”. The magazine “Russian Word”, represented by D.I. Pisarev, even recognized the hero of the novel, the radical Bazarov, as its ideal. At the same time, if you look at the image of Bazarov from a historical point of view, as a type reflecting the mood of the sixties of the 19th century, then it is rather not fully revealed, since socio-political radicalism, quite strong at that time, is almost absent from the novel. was affected.

While living abroad, in Paris, the writer became close to many emigrants and foreign youth. He again had a desire to write about the topic of the day - about the revolutionary “going to the people”, as a result of which his largest novel, Nov, appeared. But, despite his efforts, Turgenev failed to grasp the most characteristic features of the Russian revolutionary movement. His mistake was that he made the center of the novel one of the weak-willed people typical of his works, who could be characteristic of the generation of the 1840s, but not of the 1870s. The novel did not receive high praise from critics. Of the writer’s later works, the “Song of Triumphant Love” and “Prose Poems” attracted the most attention.

XIX-XX century

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, critics and literary scholars S. A. Vengerov, Yu. I. Aikhenvald, D. S. Merezhkovsky, D. S. turned to the work of I. S. Turgenev. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, A. I. Nezelenov, Yu. N. Govorukha-Otrok, V. V. Rozanov, A. E. Gruzinsky, E. A. Solovyov-Andreevich, L. A. Tikhomirov, V. E. Cheshikhin-Vetrinsky, A. F. Koni, A. G. Gornfeld, F. D. Batyushkov, V. V. Stasov, G. V. Plekhanov, K. D. Balmont, P. P. Pertsov, M. O. Gershenzon, P. A. Kropotkin, R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik and others.

According to the literary scholar and theater critic Yu. I. Aikhenvald, who gave his assessment of the writer at the beginning of the century, Turgenev was not a deep writer, he wrote superficially and in light tones. According to the critic, the writer took life lightly. Knowing all the passions, possibilities and depths of human consciousness, the writer, however, did not have true seriousness: “ A tourist of life, he visits everything, looks everywhere, does not stop anywhere for long, and at the end of his road he laments that the journey is over, that there is nowhere else to go. Rich, meaningful, varied, it does not, however, have pathos or genuine seriousness. His softness is his weakness. He showed reality, but first took out its tragic core" According to Aikhenvald, Turgenev is easy to read, easy to live with, but he does not want to worry himself and does not want his readers to worry. The critic also reproached the writer for the monotony in the use of artistic techniques. But at the same time he called Turgenev “ patriot of Russian nature"for his celebrated landscapes of his native land.

The author of an article about I. S. Turgenev in the six-volume “History of Russian Literature of the 19th Century” edited by Professor D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky (1911), A. E. Gruzinsky, explains the critics’ complaints about Turgenev as follows. In his opinion, in Turgenev’s work, most of all, they were looking for answers to the living questions of our time, the formulation of new social problems. " This element of his novels and stories alone was, in fact, taken seriously and carefully by the guiding criticism of the 50s and 60s; it was considered obligatory in Turgenev’s work" Having not received answers to their questions in the new works, the critics were dissatisfied and reprimanded the author “ for failure to fulfill his public duties" As a result, the author was declared exhausted and wasting his talent. Gruzinsky calls this approach to Turgenev’s work one-sided and erroneous. Turgenev was not a writer-prophet, a writer-citizen, although he connected all his major works with important and burning themes of his turbulent era, but most of all he was an artist-poet, and his interest in public life was, rather, in the nature of careful analysis .

Critic E. A. Solovyov joins this conclusion. He also draws attention to the mission of Turgenev as a translator of Russian literature for European readers. Thanks to him, soon almost all the best works of Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy were translated into foreign languages. " No one, we note, was better suited to this high and difficult task than Turgenev. By the very essence of his talent, he was not only Russian, but also a European, world-wide writer"- writes E. A. Solovyov. Dwelling on the way of depicting the love of Turgenev’s girls, he makes the following observation: “ Turgenev's heroines fall in love immediately and love only once, and this is for the rest of their lives. They are obviously from the tribe of poor Azdras, for whom love and death were equivalent. Love and death, love and death are his inseparable artistic associations" In the character of Turgenev, the critic also finds much of what the writer portrayed in his hero Rudin: “ Undoubted chivalry and not particularly high vanity, idealism and a tendency towards melancholy, a huge mind and a broken will».

The representative of decadent criticism in Russia, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, had an ambivalent attitude towards Turgenev’s work. He did not appreciate Turgenev’s novels, preferring “small prose” to them, especially the so-called “mysterious stories and tales” of the writer. According to Merezhkovsky, Ivan Turgenev is the first impressionist artist, the forerunner of the later symbolists: “ The value of Turgenev the artist for the literature of the future is in the creation of an impressionistic style, which represents an artistic education not related to the work of this writer as a whole».

A.P. Chekhov had the same contradictory attitude towards Turgenev. In 1902, in a letter to O. L. Knipper-Chekhova, he wrote: “ I'm reading Turgenev. After this, the writer will be left with one eighth or one tenth of what he wrote. Everything else will go into the archives in 25-35 years" However, the very next year he informed her: “ Never before have I been drawn to Turgenev as much as I am now».

Symbolist poet and critic Maximilian Voloshin wrote that Turgenev, thanks to his artistic sophistication, which he learned from French writers, occupies a special place in Russian literature. But unlike French literature with its fragrant and fresh sensuality, the feeling of living and loving flesh, Turgenev bashfully and dreamily idealized a woman. In Voloshin’s contemporary literature, he saw a connection between Ivan Bunin’s prose and Turgenev’s landscape sketches.

Subsequently, the topic of Bunin's superiority over Turgenev in landscape prose will be repeatedly raised by literary critics. Even L.N. Tolstoy, according to the recollections of pianist A.B. Goldenweiser, said about the description of nature in Bunin’s story: “it is raining,” and it is written so that Turgenev would not have written like that, and there is nothing to say about me.” Both Turgenev and Bunin were united by the fact that both were writer-poets, writers-hunters, writers-nobles and authors of “noble” stories. Nevertheless, the singer of the “sad poetry of ruined noble nests,” Bunin, according to the literary critic Fyodor Stepun, “as an artist is much more sensual than Turgenev.” “The nature of Bunin, for all the realistic accuracy of his writing, is still completely different from that of our two greatest realists - Tolstoy and Turgenev. Bunin’s nature is more unstable, more musical, more psychic and, perhaps, even more mystical than the nature of Tolstoy and Turgenev.” Nature in Turgenev’s depiction is more static than in Bunin’s, says F.A. Stepun, despite the fact that Turgenev has more purely external picturesqueness and picturesqueness.

In Soviet Union

Russian language

From "Poems in Prose"

In days of doubt, in days of painful thoughts about the fate of my homeland, you alone are my support and support, oh great, mighty, truthful and free Russian language! Without you, how can one not fall into despair at the sight of everything that is happening at home? But one cannot believe that such a language was not given to a great people!

June, 1882

In the Soviet Union, Turgenev’s work was paid attention not only by critics and literary scholars, but also by the leaders and leaders of the Soviet state: V. I. Lenin, M. I. Kalinin, A. V. Lunacharsky. Scientific literary criticism largely depended on the ideological guidelines of “party” literary criticism. Among those who contributed to Turgen studies are G. N. Pospelov, N. L. Brodsky, B. L. Modzalevsky, V. E. Evgeniev-Maksimov, M. B. Khrapchenko, G. A. Byaly, S. M. Petrov, A. I. Batyuto, G. B. Kurlyandskaya, N. I. Prutskov, Yu. V. Mann, Priyma F. Ya., A. B. Muratov, V. I. Kuleshov, V. M. Markovich, V. G. Fridlyand, K. I. Chukovsky, B. V. Tomashevsky, B. M. Eikhenbaum, V. B. Shklovsky, Yu. G. Oksman A. S. Bushmin, M. P. Alekseev and so on.

Turgenev was repeatedly quoted by V.I. Lenin, who especially highly valued him “ great and mighty» language.M. I. Kalinin said that Turgenev’s work had not only artistic, but also socio-political significance, which gave artistic brilliance to his works, and that the writer showed in the serf peasant a man who, like all people, deserves to have human rights . A.V. Lunacharsky, in his lecture dedicated to the work of Ivan Turgenev, called him one of the creators of Russian literature. According to A. M. Gorky, Turgenev left an “excellent legacy” to Russian literature.

According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the artistic system created by the writer influenced the poetics of not only Russian, but also Western European novels of the second half of the 19th century. It largely served as the basis for the “intellectual” novel by L. N. Tolstoy and F. M. Dostoevsky, in which the fate of the central characters depends on their solution to an important philosophical question of universal significance. The literary principles laid down by the writer were developed in the works of many Soviet writers - A. N. Tolstoy, K. G. Paustovsky and others. His plays became an integral part of the repertoire of Soviet theaters. Many of Turgenev's works were filmed. Soviet literary scholars paid great attention to the creative heritage of Turgenev - many works were published devoted to the life and work of the writer, to the study of his role in the Russian and world literary process. Scientific studies of his texts were carried out, and commented collected works were published. Turgenev museums were opened in the city of Orel and the former estate of his mother, Spassky-Lutovinovo.

According to the academic “History of Russian Literature”, Turgenev became the first in Russian literature who managed in his work, through pictures of everyday village life and various images of ordinary peasants, to express the idea that the enslaved people constitute the root, the living soul of the nation. And the literary critic Professor V.M. Markovich said that Turgenev was one of the first to try to portray the inconsistency of the people’s character without embellishment, and he was the first to show the same people worthy of admiration, admiration and love.

Soviet literary critic G.N. Pospelov wrote that Turgenev’s literary style can be called realistic, despite its emotional and romantic elation. Turgenev saw the social weakness of the advanced people from the nobility and looked for another force capable of leading the Russian liberation movement; he later saw such strength in the Russian democrats of 1860-1870.

Foreign criticism

Of the emigrant writers and literary critics, V.V. Nabokov, B.K. Zaitsev, and D.P. Svyatopolk-Mirsky turned to Turgenev’s work. Many foreign writers and critics also left their reviews of Turgenev’s work: Friedrich Bodenstedt, Emile Oman, Ernest Renan, Melchior Vogüet, Saint-Beuve, Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Edmond Goncourt, Emile Zola, Henry James, John Galsworthy, George Sand , Virginia Woolf, Anatole France, James Joyce, William Rolston, Alphonse Daudet, Theodore Storm, Hippolyte Taine, Georg Brandes, Thomas Carlyle and so on.

The English prose writer and Nobel Prize winner in literature John Galsworthy considered Turgenev's novels to be the greatest example of prose art and noted that Turgenev helped " bring the proportions of the novel to perfection" For him Turgenev was “ the most sophisticated poet who ever wrote novels", and the Turgenev tradition was important for Galsworthy.

Another British writer, literary critic and representative of modernist literature of the first half of the 20th century, Virginia Woolf, noted that Turgenev’s books not only touch with their poetry, but also seem to belong to today’s time, so they have not lost the perfection of form. She wrote that Ivan Turgenev is characterized by a rare quality: a sense of symmetry and balance, which give a generalized and harmonious picture of the world. At the same time, she made a reservation that this symmetry triumphs not at all because he is such a great storyteller. On the contrary, Woolf believed that some of his stories were rather poorly told, since they contained loops and digressions, confusing, unintelligible information about great-grandparents (as in “The Noble Nest”). But she pointed out that Turgenev’s books are not a sequence of episodes, but a sequence of emotions emanating from the central character, and it is not objects that are connected in them, but feelings, and when you finish reading the book, you experience aesthetic satisfaction. Another famous representative of modernism, Russian and American writer and literary critic V.V. Nabokov, in his “Lectures on Russian Literature,” spoke of Turgenev not as a great writer, but called him “ cute" Nabokov noted that Turgenev’s landscapes were good, “Turgenev’s girls” were charming, and he spoke approvingly of the musicality of Turgenev’s prose. And he called the novel “Fathers and Sons” one of the most brilliant works of the 19th century. But he also pointed out the writer’s shortcomings, saying that he “ gets bogged down in disgusting sweetness" According to Nabokov, Turgenev was often too straightforward and did not trust the reader’s intuition, himself trying to dot the i’s. Another modernist, the Irish writer James Joyce, especially singled out “Notes of a Hunter” from the entire work of the Russian writer, which, in his opinion, “ penetrate deeper into life than his novels" Joyce believed that it was from them that Turgenev developed as a great international writer.

According to researcher D. Peterson, the American reader was struck by Turgenev’s “ manner of narration... far from both Anglo-Saxon moralizing and French frivolity" According to the critic, the model of realism created by Turgenev had a great influence on the formation of realistic principles in the work of American writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

XXI Century

In Russia, much is devoted to the study and memory of Turgenev’s work in the 21st century. Every five years, the State Literature Museum of I. S. Turgenev in Orel, together with Oryol State University and the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, holds major scientific conferences that have international status. As part of the “Turgenev Autumn” project, the museum annually hosts Turgenev readings, in which researchers of the writer’s work from Russia and abroad take part. Turgenev anniversaries are also celebrated in other cities of Russia. In addition, his memory is celebrated abroad. Thus, in the Ivan Turgenev Museum in Bougival, which opened on the 100th anniversary of the writer’s death on September 3, 1983, so-called music salons are held annually, where the music of composers from the times of Ivan Turgenev and Pauline Viardot is heard.

Bibliography

Novels

• Rudin(1855)
• Noble nest (1858)
• The Eve(1860)
• Fathers and Sons (1862)
• Smoke(1867)
• Nov(1877)

Novels and stories

• Andrey Kolosov (1844)
• Three Portraits (1845)
• Jew (1846)
• Breter (1847)
• Petushkov (1848)
• Diary of an Extra Man (1849)
• Mumu(1852)
• Inn (1852)
• Notes of a Hunter (collection of stories) (1852)
• Yakov Pasynkov (1855)
• Faust (1855)
• Calm (1856)
• Trip to Polesie (1857)
• Asya(1858)
• First Love (1860)
• Ghosts (1864)
• Brigadier (1866)
• Unhappy (1868)
• Strange Story (1870)
• King Lear of the Steppes (1870)
• Dog (1870)
• Knock... knock... knock!.. (1871)
• Spring Waters (1872)
• Punin and Baburin (1874)
• Clock (1876)
• Dream (1877)
• The Story of Father Alexei (1877)
• Song of Triumphant Love (1881)
• Own master's office (1881)

Plays

• Where it's thin, it breaks (1848)
• Freeloader (1848)
• Breakfast at the Leader's (1849)
• Bachelor (1849)
• A Month in the Country (1850)
• Provincial (1851)

Turgenev in illustrations

Over the years, the works of I. S. Turgenev were illustrated by illustrators and graphic artists P. M. Boklevsky, N. D. Dmitriev-Orenburgsky, A. A. Kharlamov, V. V. Pukirev, P. P. Sokolov, V. M. Vasnetsov, D. N. Kardovsky, V. A. Taburin, K. I. Rudakov, V. A. Sveshnikov, P. F. Stroev, N. A. Benois, B. M. Kustodiev, K. V. Lebedev and others. The imposing figure of Turgenev is captured in the sculpture of A. N. Belyaev, M. M. Antokolsky, Zh. A. Polonskaya, S. A. Lavrentieva, in the drawings of D. V. Grigorovich, A. A. Bakunin, K. A. Gorbunov, I. N. Kramsky, Adolf Menzel, Pauline Viardot, Ludwig Pietsch, M. M. Antokolsky, K. Shamro, in caricatures by N. A. Stepanov, A. I. Lebedev, V. I. Porfiryev, A. M. Volkov , in the engraving of Yu. S. Baranovsky, in the portraits of E. Lamy, A. P. Nikitin, V. G. Perov, I. E. Repin, Ya. P. Polonsky, V. V. Vereshchagin, V. V. Mate , E. K. Lipgart, A. A. Kharlamov, V. A. Bobrova. The works of many painters “based on Turgenev” are known: Ya. P. Polonsky (plots by Spassky-Lutovinov), S. Yu. Zhukovsky (“Poetry of an old noble nest”, “Night”), V. G. Perov, (“Old parents at his son's grave"). Ivan Sergeevich himself drew well and was an auto-illustrator of his own works.

Film adaptations

Many films and television films have been made based on the works of Ivan Turgenev. His works formed the basis for paintings created in different countries of the world. The first film adaptations appeared at the beginning of the 20th century (the era of silent films). The film “The Freeloader” was filmed twice in Italy (1913 and 1924). In 1915, the films “The Noble Nest”, “After Death” (based on the story “Klara Milich”) and “Song of Triumphant Love” (with the participation of V.V. Kholodnaya and V.A. Polonsky) were shot in the Russian Empire. The story “Spring Waters” was filmed 8 times in different countries. Four films were made based on the novel “The Noble Nest”; based on stories from “Notes of a Hunter” - 4 films; based on the comedy “A Month in the Country” - 10 TV films; based on the story “Mumu” ​​- 2 feature films and a cartoon; based on the play “Freeloader” - 5 paintings. The novel “Fathers and Sons” served as the basis for 4 films and a television series, the story “First Love” formed the basis for nine feature films and television films.

The image of Turgenev was used in cinema by director Vladimir Khotinenko. In the 2011 television series Dostoevsky, the role of the writer was played by actor Vladimir Simonov. In the film “Belinsky” by Grigory Kozintsev (1951), the role of Turgenev was played by actor Igor Litovkin, and in the film “Tchaikovsky” directed by Igor Talankin (1969), the writer was played by actor Bruno Freundlich.

Addresses

In Moscow

Biographers count over fifty addresses and memorable places in Moscow associated with Turgenev.

• 1824 - house of state councilor A.V. Kopteva on Bolshaya Nikitskaya (not preserved);
• 1827 - city estate, Valuev's property - Sadovaya-Samotyochnaya street, 12/2 (not preserved - rebuilt);
• 1829 - Krause boarding house, Armenian Institute - Armenian Lane, 2;
• 1830 - Steingel House - Gagarinsky Lane, building 15/7;
• 1830s - House of General N.F. Alekseeva - Sivtsev Vrazhek (corner of Kaloshin Lane), house 24/2;
• 1830s - House of M. A. Smirnov (not preserved, now a building built in 1903) - Verkhnyaya Kislovka;
• 1830s - House of M. N. Bulgakova - in Maly Uspensky Lane;
• 1830s - House on Malaya Bronnaya Street (not preserved);
• 1839-1850 - Ostozhenka, 37 (corner of 2nd Ushakovsky Lane, now Khilkov Lane). It is generally accepted that the house where I. S. Turgenev visited Moscow belonged to his mother, but N. M. Chernov, a researcher of Turgenev’s life and work, indicates that the house was rented from the surveyor N. V. Loshakovsky;
• 1850s - house of Nikolai Sergeevich Turgenev’s brother - Prechistenka, 26 (not preserved)
• 1860s - The house where I. S. Turgenev repeatedly visited the apartment of his friend, the manager of the Moscow appanage office, I. I. Maslov - Prechistensky Boulevard, 10;

In St. Petersburg

Memory

Named after Turgenev:

Toponymy

• Streets and squares of Turgenev in many cities of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia.
• Moscow metro station "Turgenevskaya"

Public institutions

• Oryol State Academic Theater.
• Library-reading room named after I. S. Turgenev in Moscow.
• School of Russian language and Russian culture named after Turgenev (Turin, Italy).
• Russian Public Library named after I. S. Turgenev (Paris, France).

Museums

• Museum of I. S. Turgenev (“ Mumu's house") - (Moscow, Ostozhenka St., 37).
• State Literary Museum named after I. S. Turgenev (Oryol).
• Museum-reserve "Spasskoye-Lutovinovo" estate of I. S. Turgenev (Oryol region).
• Street and museum "Turgenev's Dacha" in Bougival, France.

Monuments

In honor of I. S. Turgenev, monuments were erected in the following cities:

• Moscow (in Bobrov Lane).
• St. Petersburg (on Italianskaya street).
• Eagle:
• Monument in Orel;
• Bust of Turgenev on the "Noble Nest".

Other objects

The name of Turgenev is borne by the branded train of JSC Russian Railways Moscow - Simferopol - Moscow (No. 029/030) and Moscow - Orel - Moscow (No. 33/34)

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev is a famous Russian writer, poet, translator, member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1860).

Orel city

Lithography. 1850s

“On Monday, October 28, 1818, a son, Ivan, 12 inches tall, was born in Orel, in his house, at 12 o’clock in the morning,” Varvara Petrovna Turgeneva made this entry in her memorial book.
Ivan Sergeevich was her second son. The first - Nikolai - was born two years earlier, and in 1821 another boy appeared in the Turgenev family - Sergei.

Parents
It is difficult to imagine more dissimilar people than the parents of the future writer.
Mother - Varvara Petrovna, nee Lutovinova - was a powerful woman, intelligent and fairly educated, but did not shine with beauty. She was short and squat, with a broad face marred by smallpox. And only the eyes were good: large, dark and shiny.
Varvara Petrovna was already thirty years old when she met the young officer Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev. He came from an old noble family, which, however, had already become impoverished by that time. All that was left of the former wealth was a small estate. Sergei Nikolaevich was handsome, elegant, and smart. And it is not surprising that he made an irresistible impression on Varvara Petrovna, and she made it clear that if Sergei Nikolaevich wooed, there would be no refusal.
The young officer did not think for long. And although the bride was six years older than him and was not attractive, the vast lands and thousands of serf souls that she owned determined Sergei Nikolaevich’s decision.
At the beginning of 1816, the marriage took place, and the young couple settled in Orel.
Varvara Petrovna idolized and was afraid of her husband. She gave him complete freedom and did not restrict him in anything. Sergei Nikolaevich lived the way he wanted, without burdening himself with worries about his family and household. In 1821, he retired and moved with his family to his wife’s estate, Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, seventy miles from Orel.

The future writer spent his childhood in Spassky-Lutovinovo near the city of Mtsensk, Oryol province. Much of Turgenev’s work is connected with this family estate of his mother Varvara Petrovna, a stern and domineering woman. In the estates and estates he described, the features of his native “nest” are invariably visible. Turgenev considered himself indebted to the Oryol region, its nature and inhabitants.

The Turgenev estate Spasskoe-Lutovinovo was located in a birch grove on a gentle hill. Around the spacious two-story manor house with columns, adjoined by semicircular galleries, there was a huge park with linden alleys, orchards and flower beds.

Years of study
Varvara Petrovna was primarily involved in raising children at an early age. Gusts of care, attention and tenderness were replaced by attacks of bitterness and petty tyranny. On her orders, children were punished for the slightest offenses, and sometimes for no reason. “I have nothing to remember my childhood,” Turgenev said many years later. “Not a single bright memory. I was afraid of my mother like fire. I was punished for every trifle - in a word, I was drilled like a recruit.”
The Turgenev house had a fairly large library. Huge cabinets contained works of ancient writers and poets, works by French encyclopedists: Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, novels by W. Scott, de Stael, Chateaubriand; works of Russian writers: Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Karamzin, Dmitriev, Zhukovsky, as well as books on history, natural science, botany. Soon the library became Turgenev’s favorite place in the house, where he sometimes spent whole days. To a large extent, the boy’s interest in literature was supported by his mother, who read quite a lot and knew French literature and Russian poetry of the late 18th - early 19th centuries well.
At the beginning of 1827, the Turgenev family moved to Moscow: it was time to prepare their children for admission to educational institutions. First, Nikolai and Ivan were placed in the private boarding house of Winterkeller, and then in the boarding house of Krause, later called the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages. The brothers did not study here for long - only a few months.
Their further education was entrusted to home teachers. With them they studied Russian literature, history, geography, mathematics, foreign languages ​​- German, French, English - drawing. Russian history was taught by the poet I. P. Klyushnikov, and the Russian language was taught by D. N. Dubensky, a famous researcher of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.”

University years. 1833-1837.
Turgenev was not yet fifteen years old when, having successfully passed the entrance exams, he became a student in the literature department of Moscow University.
Moscow University at that time was the main center of advanced Russian thought. Among the young people who came to the university in the late 1820s and early 1830s, the memory of the Decembrists, who took up arms against the autocracy, was kept sacred. Students closely followed the events that were taking place in Russia and Europe at that time. Turgenev later said that it was during these years that he began to develop “very free, almost republican convictions.”
Of course, Turgenev had not yet developed a coherent and consistent worldview in those years. He was barely sixteen years old. It was a period of growth, a period of search and doubt.
Turgenev studied at Moscow University for only one year. After his older brother Nikolai joined the Guards Artillery stationed in St. Petersburg, his father decided that the brothers should not be separated, and therefore in the summer of 1834 Turgenev applied for a transfer to the philological department of the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg University.
Before the Turgenev family had time to settle in the capital, Sergei Nikolaevich unexpectedly died. The death of his father deeply shocked Turgenev and made him think seriously for the first time about life and death, about man’s place in the eternal movement of nature. The young man’s thoughts and experiences were reflected in a number of lyrical poems, as well as in the dramatic poem “The Wall” (1834). Turgenev's first literary experiments were created under the strong influence of the then dominant romanticism in literature, and above all the poetry of Byron. Turgenev's hero is an ardent, passionate man, full of enthusiastic aspirations, who does not want to put up with the evil world around him, but cannot find use for his powers and ultimately dies tragically. Later, Turgenev spoke very skeptically about this poem, calling it “an absurd work in which, with childish ineptitude, a slavish imitation of Byron’s Manfred was expressed.”
However, it should be noted that the poem “The Wall” reflected the young poet’s thoughts about the meaning of life and the purpose of man in it, that is, questions that many great poets of that time tried to resolve: Goethe, Schiller, Byron.
After Moscow, the capital's university seemed colorless to Turgenev. Here everything was different: there was no atmosphere of friendship and camaraderie to which he was accustomed, there was no desire for lively communication and debate, few people were interested in issues of public life. And the composition of the students was different. Among them were many young men from aristocratic families who had little interest in science.
Teaching at St. Petersburg University was carried out according to a fairly broad program. But the students did not receive any serious knowledge. There were no interesting teachers. Only the professor of Russian literature Pyotr Aleksandrovich Pletnev turned out to be closest to Turgenev.
While studying at the university, Turgenev developed a deep interest in music and theater. He often attended concerts, opera and drama theaters.
After graduating from the university, Turgenev decided to continue his education and in May 1838 he went to Berlin.

Studying abroad. 1838-1940.
After St. Petersburg, Berlin seemed to Turgenev a prim and a little boring city. “What can you say about a city,” he wrote, “where they get up at six o’clock in the morning, have dinner at two and go to bed before the chickens, about a city where at ten o’clock in the evening only melancholic watchmen laden with beer wander through the deserted streets...”
But the university auditoriums at the University of Berlin were always crowded. The lectures were attended by not only students, but also volunteers - officers and officials who wanted to get involved in science.
Already the first classes at the University of Berlin revealed that Turgenev had gaps in his education. Later he wrote: “I studied philosophy, ancient languages, history and studied Hegel with special zeal..., but at home I was forced to cram Latin grammar and Greek, which I knew poorly. And I wasn’t one of the worst candidates.”
Turgenev diligently comprehended the wisdom of German philosophy, and in his free time he attended theaters and concerts. Music and theater became a true need for him. He listened to the operas of Mozart and Gluck, the symphonies of Beethoven, and watched the dramas of Shakespeare and Schiller.
Living abroad, Turgenev did not stop thinking about his homeland, about his people, about their present and future.
Even then, in 1840, Turgenev believed in the great destiny of his people, in their strength and resilience.
Finally, the course of lectures at the University of Berlin ended, and in May 1841 Turgenev returned to Russia and most seriously began to prepare himself for scientific activity.

He dreamed of becoming a professor of philosophy.
Passion for philosophical sciences is one of the characteristic features of the social movement in Russia in the late 1830s and early 1840s. Advanced people of that time tried, with the help of abstract philosophical categories, to explain the world around them and the contradictions of Russian reality, to find answers to the pressing questions of our time that worried them.
However, Turgenev's plans changed. He became disillusioned with idealistic philosophy and gave up hope of resolving the issues that worried him with its help. In addition, Turgenev came to the conclusion that science was not his calling.
At the beginning of 1842, Ivan Sergeevich submitted a petition to the Minister of Internal Affairs to enlist him in the service and was soon accepted as an official of special assignments in the office under the command of V.I. Dahl, a famous writer and ethnographer. However, Turgenev did not serve for long and retired in May 1845.
His stay in the civil service gave him the opportunity to collect a lot of vital material, connected primarily with the tragic situation of the peasants and with the destructive power of serfdom, since in the office where Turgenev served, cases of punishment of serfs, all kinds of abuses by officials, etc. were often considered. It was at this time that Turgenev developed a sharply negative attitude towards the bureaucratic order prevailing in state institutions, towards the callousness and selfishness of St. Petersburg officials. In general, life in St. Petersburg made a depressing impression on Turgenev.

Creativity of I. S. Turgenev.
The first work I. S. Turgenev can be considered the dramatic poem “The Wall” (1834), which he wrote in iambic pentameter as a student, and in 1836 showed to his university teacher P. A. Pletnev.
The first publication in print was a short review of the book by A. N. Muravyov “Journey to Russian Holy Places” (1836). Many years later, Turgenev explained the appearance of this first printed work: “I had just turned seventeen years old, I was a student at St. Petersburg University; my relatives, in view of securing my future career, recommended me to Serbinovich, the then publisher of the Journal of the Ministry of Education. Serbinovich, whom I saw only once, probably wanting to test my abilities, handed me... Muravyov’s book so that I could sort it out; I wrote something about it - and now, almost forty years later, I find out that this “something” was worthy of embossing.”
His first works were poetic. His poems, starting from the late 1830s, began to appear in the magazines Sovremennik and Otechestvennye zapiski. In them one could clearly hear the motives of the then dominant romantic movement, echoes of the poetry of Zhukovsky, Kozlov, Benediktov. Most of the poems are elegiac reflections about love, about aimlessly lived youth. They, as a rule, were permeated with motives of sadness, sadness, and melancholy. Turgenev himself was later very skeptical about his poems and poems written at this time, and never included them in his collected works. “I feel a positive, almost physical antipathy towards my poems...,” he wrote in 1874, “I would give a lot for them not to exist in the world.”
Turgenev was unfair in speaking so harshly about his poetic experiments. Among them you can find many talentedly written poems, many of which were highly appreciated by readers and critics: “Ballad”, “Alone again, alone...”, “Spring Evening”, “Foggy Morning, Gray Morning...” and others . Some of them were later set to music and became popular romances.
The beginning of his literary activity Turgenev counted the year 1843, when his poem “Parasha” appeared in print, which opened a whole series of works dedicated to the debunking of the romantic hero. “Parasha” met with a very sympathetic review from Belinsky, who saw in the young author “extraordinary poetic talent,” “true observation, deep thought,” “the son of our time, carrying in his chest all his sorrows and questions.”
First prose work I. S. Turgenev - the essay “Khor and Kalinich” (1847), published in the magazine “Sovremennik” and opened a whole series of works under the general title “Notes of a Hunter” (1847-1852). “Notes of a Hunter” was created by Turgenev at the turn of the forties and early fifties and appeared in print in the form of separate stories and essays. In 1852, they were combined by the writer into a book, which became a major event in Russian social and literary life. According to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, “Notes of a Hunter” “laid the foundation for a whole literature that has as its object the people and their needs.”
"Notes of a Hunter" is a book about people's life in the era of serfdom. The images of peasants, distinguished by a sharp practical mind, a deep understanding of life, a sober view of the world around them, who are able to feel and understand the beautiful, respond to other people’s grief and suffering, emerge as if alive from the pages of “Notes of a Hunter.” No one had portrayed the people like this in Russian literature before Turgenev. And it is no coincidence that, after reading the first essay from “Notes of a Hunter - “Khor and Kalinich,” Belinsky noticed that Turgenev “came to the people from a side from which no one had approached him before.”
Turgenev wrote most of “Notes of a Hunter” in France.

Works by I. S. Turgenev
Stories: collection of stories “Notes of a Hunter” (1847-1852), “Mumu” ​​(1852), “The Story of Father Alexei” (1877), etc.;
Stories:“Asya” (1858), “First Love” (1860), “Spring Waters” (1872), etc.;
Novels:“Rudin” (1856), “The Noble Nest” (1859), “On the Eve” (1860), “Fathers and Sons” (1862), “Smoke” (1867), “New” (1877);
Plays:“Breakfast at the Leader’s” (1846), “Where it’s thin, it breaks” (1847), “Bachelor” (1849), “Provincial Woman” (1850), “A Month in the Country” (1854), etc.;
Poetry: dramatic poem “Wall” (1834), poems (1834-1849), poem “Parasha” (1843), etc., literary and philosophical “Poems in Prose” (1882);
Translations Byron D., Goethe I., Whitman W., Flaubert G.
As well as criticism, journalism, memoirs and correspondence.

Love through life
Turgenev met the famous French singer Polina Viardot back in 1843, in St. Petersburg, where she came on tour. The singer performed a lot and successfully, Turgenev attended all her performances, told everyone about her, praised her everywhere, and quickly separated himself from the crowd of her countless fans. Their relationship developed and soon reached its climax. He spent the summer of 1848 (like the previous one, like the next one) in Courtavenel, on Pauline’s estate.
Love for Polina Viardot remained both happiness and torment for Turgenev until his last days: Viardot was married, did not intend to divorce her husband, but did not drive Turgenev away either. He felt on a leash. but I was unable to break this thread. For more than thirty years, the writer essentially became a member of the Viardot family. He survived Polina's husband (a man, apparently, of angelic patience), Louis Viardot, by only three months.

Sovremennik magazine
Belinsky and his like-minded people had long dreamed of having their own press organ. This dream came true only in 1846, when Nekrasov and Panaev managed to lease the Sovremennik magazine, founded at one time by A. S. Pushkin and published after his death by P. A. Pletnev. Turgenev took a direct part in organizing the new magazine. According to P.V. Annenkov, Turgenev was “the soul of the whole plan, its organizer... Nekrasov consulted with him every day; the magazine was filled with his works.”
In January 1847, the first issue of the updated Sovremennik was published. Turgenev published several works in it: a cycle of poems, a review of the tragedy of N.V. Kukolnik “Lieutenant General Patkul...”, “Modern Notes” (together with Nekrasov). But the real highlight of the magazine’s first book was the essay “Khor and Kalinich,” which opened a whole series of works under the general title “Notes of a Hunter.”

Recognition in the West
Since the 60s, the name of Turgenev has become widely known in the West. Turgenev maintained close friendly relations with many Western European writers. He was well acquainted with P. Mérimée, J. Sand, G. Flaubert, E. Zola, A. Daudet, Guy de Maupassant, and knew many figures of English and German culture closely. They all considered Turgenev an outstanding realist artist and not only highly appreciated his works, but also studied from him. Addressing Turgenev, J. Sand said: “Teacher! “We all must go through your school!”
Turgenev spent almost his entire life in Europe, visiting Russia only occasionally. He was a prominent figure in the literary life of the West. He communicated closely with many French writers, and in 1878 he even chaired (together with Victor Hugo) the International Literary Congress in Paris. It is no coincidence that it was with Turgenev that the worldwide recognition of Russian literature began.
Turgenev's greatest merit was that he was an active promoter of Russian literature and culture in the West: he himself translated the works of Russian writers into French and German, edited translations of Russian authors, contributed in every possible way to the publication of the works of his compatriots in various countries of Western Europe, introduced the Western European public to works of Russian composers and artists. Turgenev said, not without pride, about this side of his activity: “I consider it the great happiness of my life that I have brought my fatherland somewhat closer to the perception of the European public.”

Connection with Russia
Almost every spring or summer Turgenev came to Russia. Each of his visits became an event. The writer was a welcome guest everywhere. He was invited to speak at all kinds of literary and charity evenings, at friendly meetings.
At the same time, Ivan Sergeevich retained the “lordly” habits of a native Russian nobleman until the end of his life. His very appearance betrayed his origins to the inhabitants of European resorts, despite his impeccable command of foreign languages. The best pages of his prose contain much of the silence of manor life in landowner Russia. Hardly any of the writers - Turgenev's contemporaries - have such a pure and correct Russian language, capable, as he himself used to say, of “performing miracles in skillful hands.” Turgenev often wrote his novels “on the topic of the day.”
The last time Turgenev visited his homeland was in May 1881. To his friends, he repeatedly “expressed his determination to return to Russia and settle there.” However, this dream did not come true.
At the beginning of 1882, Turgenev became seriously ill, and moving was no longer out of the question. But all his thoughts were at home, in Russia. He thought about her, bedridden with a serious illness, about her future, about the glory of Russian literature.
Shortly before his death, he expressed a wish to be buried in St. Petersburg, at the Volkov cemetery, next to Belinsky.

The writer's last wish was fulfilled
"Poems in Prose".
“Poems in prose” are rightly considered the final chord of the writer’s literary activity. They reflected almost all the themes and motives of his work, as if re-experienced by Turgenev in his declining years. He himself considered “Poems in Prose” only sketches of his future works.
“Poems in Prose” is an amazing fusion of poetry and prose into a kind of unity that allows you to fit “the whole world” into the grain of small reflections, called by the author “the last breaths of... an old man.” But these “sighs” conveyed to this day the inexhaustible vital energy of the writer.

Monuments to I. S. Turgenev

A very short biography (in a nutshell)

Born on November 9, 1818 in Orel. Father - Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev (1793-1834), military man. Mother - Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova (1787-1850), noblewoman. In 1836 he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg University. From 1836 to 1839 he lived and studied in Germany. In 1852 he was exiled to his village for two years. In 1863 he moved to Germany. In 1879 he received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University. Was not married. Had an illegitimate daughter. He was fond of hunting. Died on September 3, 1883 at the age of 64 in Paris. He was buried at the Volkovskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg. Main works: “Fathers and Sons”, “Mumu”, “The Noble Nest”, “Rudin”, “Asya”, “On the Eve” and others.

Brief biography (details)

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev is a Russian realist writer of the 19th century, poet, translator and corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Turgenev was born on October 28 (November 9), 1818 in the city of Orel into a noble family. The writer's father was a retired officer, and his mother was a hereditary noblewoman. Turgenev spent his childhood on a family estate, where he had personal teachers, tutors, and serf nannies. In 1827, the Turgenev family moved to Moscow in order to give their children a decent education. There he studied at a boarding school, then studied with private teachers. Since childhood, the writer spoke several foreign languages, including English, French and German.

In 1833, Ivan entered Moscow University, and a year later he transferred to St. Petersburg to the literature department. In 1838 he went to Berlin to lecture in classical philology. There he met Bakunin and Stankevich, meetings with whom were of great importance for the writer. During the two years spent abroad, he managed to visit France, Italy, Germany and Holland. The return to their homeland took place in 1841. At the same time, he begins to actively attend literary circles, where he meets Gogol, Herzen, Aksakov, etc.

In 1843, Turgenev entered service in the office of the Minister of Internal Affairs. In the same year, he met Belinsky, who had a significant influence on the development of the young writer’s literary and social views. In 1846, Turgenev wrote several works: “Briter”, “Three Portraits”, “Freeloader”, “Provincial Woman”, etc. In 1852, one of the writer’s best stories, “Mumu,” appeared. The story was written while serving exile in Spassky-Lutovinovo. In 1852, “Notes of a Hunter” appeared, and after the death of Nicholas I, 4 of Turgenev’s largest works were published: “On the Eve”, “Rudin”, “Fathers and Sons”, “The Noble Nest”.

Turgenev gravitated towards the circle of Westernized writers. In 1863, together with the Viardot family, he left for Baden-Baden, where he actively participated in cultural life and made acquaintances with the best writers of Western Europe. Among them were Dickens, George Sand, Prosper Merimee, Thackeray, Victor Hugo and many others. Soon he became the editor of foreign translators of Russian writers. In 1878 he was appointed vice-president of the international congress of literature held in Paris. The following year, Turgenev was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford University. Living abroad, his soul was still drawn to his homeland, which was reflected in the novel “Smoke” (1867). The largest in volume was his novel “New” (1877). I. S. Turgenev died near Paris on August 22 (September 3), 1883. The writer was buried according to his will in St. Petersburg.

aliases: .....въ; -e-; I.S.T.; I.T.; L.; Nedobobov, Jeremiah; T.; T…; T.L.; T......v; ***

Russian realist writer, poet, publicist, playwright, translator, one of the classics of Russian literature

Ivan Turgenev

short biography

Outstanding Russian writer, classic of world literature, poet, publicist, memoirist, critic, playwright, translator, corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences - born on November 9 (October 28, O.S.), 1818 in the city of Orel. His father, Sergei Nikolaevich, was a retired officer, his mother Varvara Petrovna was a representative of a wealthy noble family. It was on her estate in the village of Spasskoye-Lutovinovo that Ivan Turgenev spent his childhood years.

There he received his primary education, and in order for it to be continued in a dignified manner, in 1827 the Turgenev family bought a house in Moscow and moved there. Then the parents went abroad, and Ivan was brought up in a boarding school - first at Weidenhammer, later at Krause. In 1833, young Turgenev became a student at Moscow State University, Faculty of Literature. After his older brother joined the Guards Artillery, the Turgenevs moved to St. Petersburg and to the local university, but Ivan was also transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy, graduating in 1837.

His debut in the literary field dates back to the same period of his biography. His first attempts at writing were several lyrical poems written in 1834 and the dramatic poem “Wall”. P.A. Pletnev, a professor of literature and his teacher, noticed the germs of undoubted talent. By 1837, the number of short poems written by Turgenev approached one hundred. In 1838, Turgenev’s poems “Evening” and “To the Venus of Medicine” were published in the Sovremennik magazine, edited after the death of Pushkin by P. A. Pletnev.

To become an even more educated person, the future writer in the spring of 1838 went to Germany, to Berlin, and attended university lectures on Greek and Roman literature. Returning briefly to Russia in 1839, he left it again in 1840, living in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Turgenev returned to his estate in 1841, and the following year he petitioned Moscow University to be allowed to take the exam for the degree of Master of Philosophy.

In 1843, Turgenev became an official in the ministerial office, but his ambitious impulses quickly cooled down and interest in the service was quickly lost. The poem “Parasha” published in the same 1843 and its approval by V. Belinsky led Turgenev to the decision to devote all his energies to literature. The same year was also significant for Turgenev’s biography due to his acquaintance with Pauline Viardot, an outstanding French singer who came to St. Petersburg on tour. Having seen her at the opera house, the writer was introduced to her on November 1, 1843, but then she did not pay much attention to the still little-known writer. After the end of the tour, Turgenev, despite his mother’s disapproval, went with the Viardots to Paris, since then for several years accompanying them on tours abroad.

In 1846, Ivan Sergeevich took an active part in updating the Sovremennik magazine, Nekrasov became his best friend. During 1850-1852. Russia and abroad alternately become Turgenev’s place of residence. Published in 1852, a series of short stories, united under the title “Notes of a Hunter,” was written mainly in Germany and made Turgenev a world-famous writer; in addition, the book largely influenced the further development of national literature. In the next decade, the most significant works in Turgenev’s creative heritage were published: “Rudin”, “The Noble Nest”, “On the Eve”, “Fathers and Sons”. The break with Sovremennik and Nekrasov due to Dobrolyubov’s article “When will the real day come?” dates back to this same period. with impartial criticism of Turgenev and his novel “On the Eve”. Having given Nekrasov an ultimatum as a publisher, Turgenev turned out to be a loser.

In the early 60s. Turgenev moves to live in Baden-Baden and becomes an active participant in Western European cultural life. He corresponds or maintains relationships with many celebrities, for example Charles Dickenson, Thackeray, T. Gautier, Anatole France, Maupassant, George Sand, Victor Hugo, and turns into a promoter of Russian literature abroad. On the other hand, thanks to him, Western authors become closer to his reading compatriots. In 1874 (by this time Turgenev had moved to Paris), he, together with Zola, Daudet, Flaubert, Edmond Goncourt, organized the famous “bachelor dinners of five” in the capital's restaurants. For some period, Ivan Sergeevich turns into the most famous, popular and widely read Russian writer on the European continent. The International Literary Congress, held in Paris in 1878, elected him vice-president, and since 1877 Turgenev has been an honorary doctor of the University of Oxford.

Living outside of Russia did not mean that Turgenev moved away from her life and problems. The novel “Smoke,” written in 1867, caused a huge resonance in its homeland; the novel was subjected to fierce criticism from parties occupying opposite positions. In 1877, the largest novel in terms of volume, Nov, was published, summing up the writer’s reflections of the 70s.

In the spring of 1882, a serious illness, which became fatal for Turgenev, appeared for the first time. When physical suffering subsided, Turgenev continued to compose; literally a few months before his death, the first part of his “Prose Poems” was published. Myxosarcoma claimed the life of the great writer on September 3 (August 22, O.S.), 1883. Relatives carried out the will of Turgenev, who died near Paris in the town of Bougival, and transported his body to St. Petersburg, to the Volkovo cemetery. The classic was accompanied on his final journey by a considerable number of admirers of his talent.

Biography from Wikipedia

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev(November 9, 1818, Orel, Russian Empire - September 3, 1883, Bougival, France) - Russian realist writer, poet, publicist, playwright, translator. One of the classics of Russian literature who made the most significant contribution to its development in the second half of the 19th century. Corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of Russian language and literature (1860), honorary doctor of Oxford University (1879), honorary member of Moscow University (1880).

The artistic system he created influenced the poetics of not only Russian, but also Western European novels of the second half of the 19th century. Ivan Turgenev was the first in Russian literature to begin to study the personality of the “new man” - the sixties, his moral qualities and psychological characteristics, thanks to him the term “nihilist” began to be widely used in the Russian language. He was a promoter of Russian literature and drama in the West.

The study of the works of I. S. Turgenev is a mandatory part of general education school programs in Russia. The most famous works are the cycle of stories “Notes of a Hunter”, the story “Mumu”, the story “Asya”, the novels “The Noble Nest”, “Fathers and Sons”.

Origin and early years

The family of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev came from an ancient family of Tula nobles, the Turgenevs. In a memorial book, the mother of the future writer wrote: “ On Monday, October 28, 1818, a son, Ivan, 12 inches tall, was born in Orel, in his home, at 12 o’clock in the morning. Baptized on the 4th of November, Feodor Semenovich Uvarov with his sister Fedosya Nikolaevna Teplova».

Ivan's father Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev (1793-1834) served at that time in a cavalry regiment. The carefree lifestyle of the handsome cavalry guard upset his finances, and to improve his position, in 1816 he entered into a marriage of convenience with the very wealthy Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova (1787-1850). In 1821, my father retired with the rank of colonel of a cuirassier regiment. Ivan was the second son in the family. The mother of the future writer, Varvara Petrovna, came from a wealthy noble family. Her marriage to Sergei Nikolaevich was not happy. In 1830, the father left the family and died in 1834, leaving three sons - Nikolai, Ivan and Sergei, who died early from epilepsy. The mother was a domineering and despotic woman. She herself lost her father at an early age, suffered from the cruel attitude of her mother (whom her grandson later portrayed as an old woman in the essay “Death”), and from a violent, drinking stepfather, who often beat her. Due to constant beatings and humiliation, she later moved in with her uncle, after whose death she became the owner of a magnificent estate and 5,000 souls.

Varvara Petrovna was a difficult woman. Feudal habits coexisted in her with being well-read and educated; she combined concern for raising children with family despotism. Ivan was also subjected to maternal beatings, despite the fact that he was considered her beloved son. The boy was taught literacy by frequently changing French and German tutors. In Varvara Petrovna’s family, everyone spoke exclusively French to each other, even prayers in the house were said in French. She traveled widely and was an enlightened woman who read a lot, but also mainly in French. But her native language and literature were not alien to her: she herself had excellent, figurative Russian speech, and Sergei Nikolaevich demanded that the children write letters to him in Russian during their father’s absences. The Turgenev family maintained connections with V. A. Zhukovsky and M. N. Zagoskin. Varvara Petrovna followed the latest literature, was well informed about the works of N. M. Karamzin, V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov and N. V. Gogol, whom she readily quoted in letters to her son.

A love of Russian literature was also instilled in young Turgenev by one of the serf valets (who later became the prototype of Punin in the story “Punin and Baburin”). Until he was nine years old, Ivan Turgenev lived on his mother’s hereditary estate Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, 10 km from Mtsensk, Oryol province. In 1822, the Turgenev family made a trip to Europe, during which four-year-old Ivan almost died in Bern, falling from the railing of a moat with bears (Berengraben); His father saved him by catching him by the leg. In 1827, the Turgenevs, in order to give their children an education, settled in Moscow, buying a house on Samotek. The future writer studied first at the Weidenhammer boarding school, then at the boarding school of the director of the Lazarevsky Institute, I. F. Krause.

Education. Beginning of literary activity

In 1833, at the age of 15, Turgenev entered the literature department of Moscow University. At the same time, A. I. Herzen and V. G. Belinsky studied here. A year later, after Ivan’s older brother joined the Guards Artillery, the family moved to St. Petersburg, where Ivan Turgenev transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy at St. Petersburg University. At the university, T. N. Granovsky, the future famous scientist-historian of the Western school, became his friend.

Ivan Turgenev in his youth. Drawing by K. A. Gorbunov, 1838

At first, Turgenev wanted to become a poet. In 1834, as a third-year student, he wrote the dramatic poem “Stheno” in iambic pentameter. The young author showed these samples of writing to his teacher, professor of Russian literature P. A. Pletnev. During one of his lectures, Pletnev quite strictly analyzed this poem, without revealing its authorship, but at the same time also admitted that there was “something in the author.” These words prompted the young poet to write a number of more poems, two of which Pletnev published in 1838 in the Sovremennik magazine, of which he was the editor. They were published under the signature “…..въ”. The debut poems were “Evening” and “To the Venus of Medicine”.

Turgenev's first publication appeared in 1836 - in the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education he published a detailed review of A. N. Muravyov's “On a Journey to Holy Places.” By 1837, he had already written about a hundred short poems and several poems (the unfinished “The Old Man’s Tale,” “Calm on the Sea,” “Phantasmagoria on a Moonlit Night,” “Dream”).

After graduation. Abroad.

In 1836, Turgenev graduated from the university with the degree of a full student. Dreaming of scientific activity, the following year he passed the final exam and received a candidate's degree. In 1838 he went to Germany, where he settled in Berlin and took up his studies seriously. At the University of Berlin he attended lectures on the history of Roman and Greek literature, and at home he studied the grammar of ancient Greek and Latin. Knowledge of ancient languages ​​allowed him to read the ancient classics fluently. During his studies, he became friends with the Russian writer and thinker N.V. Stankevich, who had a noticeable influence on him. Turgenev attended lectures by the Hegelians and became interested in German idealism with its teaching about world development, about the “absolute spirit” and about the high calling of the philosopher and poet. In general, the entire way of Western European life made a strong impression on Turgenev. The young student came to the conclusion that only the assimilation of the basic principles of universal human culture can lead Russia out of the darkness in which it is immersed. In this sense, he became a convinced “Westerner.”

In the 1830-1850s, an extensive circle of literary acquaintances of the writer was formed. Back in 1837, there were fleeting meetings with A.S. Pushkin. At the same time, Turgenev met V. A. Zhukovsky, A. V. Nikitenko, A. V. Koltsov, and a little later - with M. Yu. Lermontov. Turgenev had only a few meetings with Lermontov, which did not lead to a close acquaintance, but Lermontov’s work had a certain influence on him. He tried to master the rhythm and stanza, stylistics and syntactic features of Lermontov's poetry. Thus, the poem “The Old Landowner” (1841) is in some places close in form to Lermontov’s “Testament,” and in “The Ballad” (1841) the influence of “Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov” is felt. But the most tangible connection with Lermontov’s work is in the poem “Confession” (1845), the accusatory pathos of which brings it closer to Lermontov’s poem “Duma.”

In May 1839, the old house in Spassky burned down, and Turgenev returned to his homeland, but already in 1840 he went abroad again, visiting Germany, Italy and Austria. Impressed by his meeting with a girl in Frankfurt am Main, Turgenev later wrote the story “Spring Waters.” In 1841, Ivan returned to Lutovinovo.

Turgenev's poems prominently featured in a famous magazine, 1843, No. 9

At the beginning of 1842, he submitted a request to Moscow University for admission to the exam for the degree of Master of Philosophy, but at that time there was no full-time professor of philosophy at the university, and his request was rejected. Unable to find a job in Moscow, Turgenev satisfactorily passed the exam for a master's degree in Greek and Latin philology in Latin at St. Petersburg University and wrote a dissertation for the literature department. But by this time, the craving for scientific activity had cooled, and literary creativity began to attract more and more. Having refused to defend his dissertation, he served until 1844 with the rank of collegiate secretary in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In 1843, Turgenev wrote the poem “Parasha”. Not really hoping for a positive review, he nevertheless took the copy to V.G. Belinsky. Belinsky praised Parasha, publishing his review in Otechestvennye zapiski two months later. From that time on, their acquaintance began, which later grew into a strong friendship; Turgenev was even godfather to Belinsky’s son, Vladimir. The poem was published in the spring of 1843 as a separate book under the initials “T. L." (Turgenev-Lutovinov). In the 1840s, in addition to Pletnev and Belinsky, Turgenev met with A. A. Fet.

In November 1843, Turgenev created the poem “On the Road (Foggy Morning),” set to music over the years by several composers, including A.F. Gedicke and G.L. Catoire. The most famous, however, is the romance version, originally published under the signature “Music of Abaza”; its affiliation with V.V. Abaza, E.A. Abaza or Yu.F. Abaza has not been definitively established. After its publication, the poem was perceived as a reflection of Turgenev's love for Pauline Viardot, whom he met at this time.

In 1844, the poem “Pop” was written, which the writer himself characterized rather as fun, devoid of any “deep and significant ideas.” Nevertheless, the poem attracted public interest for its anti-clerical nature. The poem was truncated by Russian censorship, but was published in its entirety abroad.

In 1846, the stories “Breter” and “Three Portraits” were published. In “The Breter,” which became Turgenev’s second story, the writer tried to imagine the struggle between Lermontov’s influence and the desire to discredit posturing. The plot for his third story, “Three Portraits,” was drawn from the Lutovinov family chronicle.

Creativity flourishes

Since 1847, Ivan Turgenev participated in the transformed Sovremennik, where he became close to N. A. Nekrasov and P. V. Annenkov. The magazine published his first feuilleton, “Modern Notes,” and began publishing the first chapters of “Notes of a Hunter.” In the very first issue of Sovremennik, the story “Khor and Kalinich” was published, which opened countless editions of the famous book. The subtitle “From the Notes of a Hunter” was added by editor I. I. Panaev to attract the attention of readers to the story. The success of the story turned out to be enormous, and this gave Turgenev the idea of ​​writing a number of others of the same kind. According to Turgenev, “Notes of a Hunter” was the fulfillment of his Hannibal oath to fight to the end against the enemy whom he had hated since childhood. “This enemy had a certain image, bore a well-known name: this enemy was serfdom.” To fulfill his intention, Turgenev decided to leave Russia. “I could not,” Turgenev wrote, “breathe the same air, stay close to what I hated. I needed to move away from my enemy so that from my very distance I could attack him more strongly.”

In 1847, Turgenev and Belinsky went abroad and in 1848 lived in Paris, where he witnessed revolutionary events. Having witnessed the killing of hostages, many attacks, the construction and fall of the barricades of the February French Revolution, he forever endured a deep disgust for revolutions in general. A little later, he became close to A. I. Herzen and fell in love with Ogarev’s wife N. A. Tuchkova.

Dramaturgy

The late 1840s - early 1850s became the time of Turgenev's most intense activity in the field of drama and a time of reflection on issues of history and theory of drama. In 1848 he wrote such plays as “Where it is thin, there it breaks” and “Freeloader”, in 1849 - “Breakfast at the Leader” and “Bachelor”, in 1850 - “A Month in the Country”, in 1851 -m - “Provincial”. Of these, “Freeloader”, “Bachelor”, “Provincial Woman” and “A Month in the Country” enjoyed success thanks to excellent stage performances. The success of “The Bachelor” was especially dear to him, which became possible largely thanks to the performing skills of A.E. Martynov, who played in four of his plays. Turgenev formulated his views on the situation of Russian theater and the tasks of dramaturgy back in 1846. He believed that the crisis in the theatrical repertoire observed at that time could be overcome by the efforts of writers committed to Gogol's dramaturism. Turgenev also counted himself among the followers of Gogol the playwright.

To master the literary techniques of drama, the writer also worked on translations of Byron and Shakespeare. At the same time, he did not try to copy Shakespeare’s dramatic techniques, he only interpreted his images, and all attempts by his contemporaries-playwrights to use Shakespeare’s work as a role model and to borrow his theatrical techniques only caused Turgenev irritation. In 1847 he wrote: “Shakespeare’s shadow looms over all dramatic writers; they cannot rid themselves of memories; These unfortunates read too much and lived too little.”

1850s

Burning of “Notes of a Hunter”, caricature by L. N. Vaksel. 1852. The writer in a hunting suit, with shackles on his feet. Musin-Pushkin points to the prison; he has the selected manuscripts and Turgenev’s gun. Behind Turgenev is a fire with manuscripts. In the lower left corner there is a cat clutching a nightingale in its paws

In 1850, Turgenev returned to Russia, but he never saw his mother, who died that same year. Together with his brother Nikolai, he shared his mother’s large fortune and, if possible, tried to ease the hardships of the peasants he inherited.

In 1850-1852 he lived either in Russia or abroad, and saw N.V. Gogol. After Gogol's death, Turgenev wrote an obituary, which St. Petersburg censorship did not allow. The reason for her dissatisfaction was that, as the chairman of the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee M. N. Musin-Pushkin put it, “it is criminal to speak so enthusiastically about such a writer.” Then Ivan Sergeevich sent the article to Moscow, V.P. Botkin, who published it in Moskovskie Vedomosti. The authorities saw a rebellion in the text, and the author was placed in a moving house, where he spent a month. On May 18, Turgenev was exiled to his native village, and only thanks to the efforts of Count A.K. Tolstoy, two years later the writer again received the right to live in the capitals.

There is an opinion that the real reason for the exile was not Gogol’s obituary, but the excessive radicalism of Turgenev’s views, manifested in sympathy for Belinsky, suspiciously frequent trips abroad, sympathetic stories about serfs, and a laudatory review of Turgenev by the emigrant Herzen. In addition, it is necessary to take into account V.P. Botkin’s warning to Turgenev in a letter on March 10, so that he should be careful in his letters, referring to third-party transmitters of advice to be more careful (the said letter from Turgenev is completely unknown, but its excerpt - from a copy in the file of the III Department - contains a harsh review of M. N. Musin-Pushkin). The enthusiastic tone of the article about Gogol only filled the gendarmerie's patience, becoming an external reason for punishment, the meaning of which was thought out by the authorities in advance. Turgenev feared that his arrest and exile would interfere with the publication of the first edition of Notes of a Hunter, but his fears were not justified - in August 1852 the book passed censorship and was published.

However, the censor V.V. Lvov, who allowed “Notes of a Hunter” to be published, was, by personal order of Nicholas I, dismissed from service and deprived of his pension (“The highest forgiveness” followed on December 6, 1853). Russian censorship also imposed a ban on the re-publication of “Notes of a Hunter,” explaining this step by the fact that Turgenev, on the one hand, poeticized the serfs, and on the other hand, depicted “that these peasants are oppressed, that the landowners behave indecently and It’s illegal... finally, for a peasant to live more freely.”

Employees of the Sovremennik magazine. Top row: L. N. Tolstoy, D. V. Grigorovich; bottom row: I. A. Goncharov, I. S. Turgenev, A. V. Druzhinin, A. N. Ostrovsky. Photo by S. L. Levitsky, February 15, 1856

During his exile in Spassky, Turgenev went hunting, read books, wrote stories, played chess, listened to Beethoven’s “Coriolanus” performed by A.P. Tyutcheva and her sister, who lived in Spassky at that time, and from time to time was subjected to raids by the police officer .

In 1852, while still in exile in Spassky-Lutovinovo, he wrote the now textbook story “Mumu”. Most of the “Notes of a Hunter” were created by the writer in Germany. “Notes of a Hunter” was published in Paris in a separate edition in 1854, although at the beginning of the Crimean War this publication was in the nature of anti-Russian propaganda, and Turgenev was forced to publicly express his protest against the poor quality French translation by Ernest Charrière. After the death of Nicholas I, four of the writer’s most significant works were published one after another: “Rudin” (1856), “The Noble Nest” (1859), “On the Eve” (1860) and “Fathers and Sons” (1862). The first two were published in Nekrasov’s Sovremennik, the other two were published in M. N. Katkov’s Russky Vestnik.

Sovremennik employees I. S. Turgenev, N. A. Nekrasov, I. I. Panaev, M. N. Longinov, V. P. Gaevsky, D. V. Grigorovich sometimes gathered in the “warlocks” circle organized by A. V. Druzhinin. The humorous improvisations of the “warlocks” sometimes went beyond censorship, so they had to be published abroad. Later, Turgenev took part in the activities of the “Society for Benefiting Needy Writers and Scientists” (Literary Fund), founded on the initiative of the same A.V. Druzhinin. From the end of 1856, the writer collaborated with the magazine “Library for Reading,” published under the editorship of A. V. Druzhinin. But his editorship did not bring the expected success to the publication, and Turgenev, who in 1856 hoped for close magazine success, in 1861 called the “Library,” edited by A. F. Pisemsky by that time, “a dead hole.”

In the autumn of 1855, Turgenev's circle of friends was replenished by Leo Tolstoy. In September of the same year, Tolstoy’s story “Cutting the Forest” was published in Sovremennik with a dedication to I. S. Turgenev.

1860s

Turgenev took an active part in the discussion of the upcoming Peasant Reform, participated in the development of various collective letters, draft addresses addressed to Emperor Alexander II, protests, etc. From the first months of publication of Herzen’s “Bell,” Turgenev was his active collaborator. He himself did not write for Kolokol, but helped in collecting materials and preparing them for publication. An equally important role of Turgenev was to mediate between A.I. Herzen and those correspondents from Russia who, for various reasons, did not want to be in direct relations with the disgraced London emigrant. In addition, Turgenev sent detailed review letters to Herzen, information from which, without the author’s signature, was also published in Kolokol. At the same time, Turgenev every time spoke out against the harsh tone of Herzen’s materials and excessive criticism of government decisions: “Please don’t scold Alexander Nikolayevich, - otherwise he is already cruelly scolded by all the reactionaries in St. Petersburg, - why bother him like that from both sides , - this way he will probably lose his spirit.”

In 1860, Sovremennik published an article by N. A. Dobrolyubov, “When will the real day come?”, in which the critic spoke very flatteringly about the new novel “On the Eve” and Turgenev’s work in general. Nevertheless, Turgenev was not satisfied with Dobrolyubov’s far-reaching conclusions that he made after reading the novel. Dobrolyubov connected the idea of ​​Turgenev’s work with the events of the approaching revolutionary transformation of Russia, which the liberal Turgenev could not reconcile with. Dobrolyubov wrote: “Then a complete, sharply and vividly outlined image of the Russian Insarov will appear in literature. And we won’t have to wait long for him: this is guaranteed by the feverish, painful impatience with which we await his appearance in life.<…>This day will finally come! And, in any case, the eve is not far from the next day: just some night separates them!...” The writer gave N.A. Nekrasov an ultimatum: either he, Turgenev, or Dobrolyubov. Nekrasov preferred Dobrolyubov. After this, Turgenev left Sovremennik and stopped communicating with Nekrasov, and subsequently Dobrolyubov became one of the prototypes for the image of Bazarov in the novel Fathers and Sons.

Turgenev gravitated towards the circle of Westernized writers who professed the principles of “pure art”, opposed to the tendentious creativity of the common revolutionaries: P. V. Annenkov, V. P. Botkin, D. V. Grigorovich, A. V. Druzhinin. For a short time Leo Tolstoy also joined this circle. For some time, Tolstoy lived in Turgenev’s apartment. After Tolstoy’s marriage to S.A. Bers, Turgenev found a close relative in Tolstoy, but even before the wedding, in May 1861, when both prose writers were visiting A.A. Fet on the Stepanovo estate, a serious quarrel occurred between them, almost which ended in a duel and spoiled the relationship between the writers for 17 long years. For some time, the writer developed complex relationships with Fet himself, as well as with some other contemporaries - F. M. Dostoevsky, I. A. Goncharov.

In 1862, good relations with former friends of Turgenev’s youth, A.I. Herzen and M.A. Bakunin, began to become complicated. From July 1, 1862 to February 15, 1863, Herzen’s “Bell” published a series of articles “Ends and Beginnings” consisting of eight letters. Without naming the addressee of Turgenev’s letters, Herzen defended his understanding of the historical development of Russia, which, in his opinion, should move along the path of peasant socialism. Herzen contrasted peasant Russia with bourgeois Western Europe, whose revolutionary potential he considered already exhausted. Turgenev objected to Herzen in private letters, insisting on the commonality of historical development for different states and peoples.

At the end of 1862, Turgenev was involved in the trial of the 32 in the case of “persons accused of having relations with London propagandists.” After the authorities ordered an immediate appearance at the Senate, Turgenev decided to write a letter to the sovereign, trying to convince him of the loyalty of his convictions, “completely independent, but conscientious.” He asked for the interrogation points to be sent to him in Paris. In the end, he was forced to go to Russia in 1864 for Senate interrogation, where he managed to avert all suspicions from himself. The Senate found him not guilty. Turgenev’s appeal personally to Emperor Alexander II caused Herzen’s bilious reaction in The Bell. Much later, this moment in the relationship between the two writers was used by V.I. Lenin to illustrate the difference between the liberal vacillations of Turgenev and Herzen: “When the liberal Turgenev wrote a private letter to Alexander II with assurance of his loyal feelings and donated two gold pieces for the soldiers wounded during the pacification of the Polish uprising , “The Bell” wrote about “the gray-haired Magdalene (masculine), who wrote to the sovereign that she did not know sleep, tormented, that the sovereign did not know about the repentance that had befallen her.” And Turgenev immediately recognized himself.” But Turgenev’s hesitation between tsarism and revolutionary democracy manifested itself in another way.

I. S. Turgenev at the dacha of the Milyutin brothers in Baden-Baden, 1867

In 1863, Turgenev settled in Baden-Baden. The writer actively participated in the cultural life of Western Europe, establishing acquaintances with the greatest writers of Germany, France and England, promoting Russian literature abroad and introducing Russian readers to the best works of contemporary Western authors. Among his acquaintances or correspondents were Friedrich Bodenstedt, William Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Henry James, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Charles Saint-Beuve, Hippolyte Taine, Prosper Mérimée, Ernest Renan, Théophile Gautier, Edmond Goncourt, Emile Zola, Anatole France , Guy de Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet, Gustave Flaubert.

Despite living abroad, all of Turgenev’s thoughts were still connected with Russia. He wrote the novel “Smoke” (1867), which caused a lot of controversy in Russian society. According to the author, everyone scolded the novel: “both red and white, and above, and below, and from the side - especially from the side.”

In 1868, Turgenev became a permanent contributor to the liberal magazine “Bulletin of Europe” and broke ties with M. N. Katkov. The breakup did not go easily - the writer began to be persecuted in the Russky Vestnik and in the Moskovskie Vedomosti. The attacks especially intensified at the end of the 1870s, when, regarding the ovation that Turgenev received, the Katkovsky newspaper assured that the writer was “tumbling” in front of progressive youth.

1870s

Feast of the classics. A. Daudet, G. Flaubert, E. Zola, I. S. Turgenev

Since 1874, the famous bachelor “dinners of the five” - Flaubert, Edmond Goncourt, Daudet, Zola and Turgenev - were held in the Parisian restaurants of Riche or Pellet. The idea belonged to Flaubert, but Turgenev was given the main role in them. Luncheons took place once a month. They raised various topics - about the features of literature, about the structure of the French language, told stories and simply enjoyed delicious food. Dinners were held not only at Parisian restaurateurs, but also at the homes of the writers themselves.

I. S. Turgenev, 1871

I. S. Turgenev acted as a consultant and editor for foreign translators of Russian writers, wrote prefaces and notes to translations of Russian writers into European languages, as well as to Russian translations of works by famous European writers. He translated Western writers into Russian and Russian writers and poets into French and German. This is how translations of Flaubert’s works “Herodias” and “The Tale of St. Julian the Merciful" for Russian readers and Pushkin's works for French readers. For some time, Turgenev became the most famous and most read Russian author in Europe, where criticism ranked him among the first writers of the century. In 1878, at the international literary congress in Paris, the writer was elected vice-president. On June 18, 1879, he was awarded the title of honorary doctor of the University of Oxford, despite the fact that the university had never given such an honor to any fiction writer before him.

The fruit of the writer’s thoughts in the 1870s was the largest of his novels in terms of volume, Nov (1877), which was also criticized. So, for example, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin regarded this novel as a service to the autocracy.

Turgenev was friends with the Minister of Education A.V. Golovnin, with the Milyutin brothers (comrade of the Minister of Internal Affairs and Minister of War), N.I. Turgenev, and was closely acquainted with the Minister of Finance M.H. Reitern. At the end of the 1870s, Turgenev became closer friends with the leaders of revolutionary emigration from Russia; his circle of acquaintances included P. L. Lavrov, P. A. Kropotkin, G. A. Lopatin and many others. Among other revolutionaries, he put German Lopatin above everyone else, admiring his intelligence, courage and moral strength.

In April 1878, Leo Tolstoy invited Turgenev to forget all the misunderstandings between them, to which Turgenev happily agreed. Friendly relations and correspondence were resumed. Turgenev explained the significance of modern Russian literature, including Tolstoy's work, to Western readers. In general, Ivan Turgenev played a big role in promoting Russian literature abroad.

However, Dostoevsky in his novel “Demons” portrayed Turgenev as the “great writer Karmazinov” - a loud, petty, well-worn and practically mediocre writer who considers himself a genius and is holed up abroad. Such an attitude towards Turgenev by the always needy Dostoevsky was caused, among other things, by Turgenev’s secure position in his noble life and the highest literary fees for those times: “To Turgenev for his “Noble Nest” (I finally read it. Extremely well) Katkov himself (from whom I I ask for 100 rubles per sheet) I gave 4000 rubles, that is, 400 rubles per sheet. My friend! I know very well that I write worse than Turgenev, but not too much worse, and finally, I hope to write not worse at all. Why am I, with my needs, taking only 100 rubles, and Turgenev, who has 2000 souls, 400?”

Turgenev, without hiding his hostility towards Dostoevsky, in a letter to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in 1882 (after Dostoevsky’s death) also did not spare his opponent, calling him “the Russian Marquis de Sade.”

In 1880, the writer took part in Pushkin celebrations dedicated to the opening of the first monument to the poet in Moscow, organized by the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.

Last years

Photo by I. S. Turgenev

Poems in prose. "Bulletin of Europe", 1882, December. From the editorial introduction it is clear that this is a magazine title, not an author's one.

The last years of Turgenev's life became for him the pinnacle of fame both in Russia, where the writer again became everyone's favorite, and in Europe, where the best critics of the time (I. Taine, E. Renan, G. Brandes, etc.) ranked him among the first writers of the century. His visits to Russia in 1878-1881 were real triumphs. All the more alarming in 1882 was the news of a severe exacerbation of his usual gouty pain. In the spring of 1882, the first signs of the disease were discovered, which soon turned out to be fatal for Turgenev. With temporary relief from the pain, he continued to work and a few months before his death he published the first part of “Poems in Prose” - a cycle of lyrical miniatures, which became his kind of farewell to life, homeland and art. The book opened with the prose poem “Village”, and ended with “Russian Language” - a lyrical hymn in which the author invested his faith in the great destiny of his country:

In days of doubt, in days of painful thoughts about the fate of my homeland, you alone are my support and support, oh great, powerful, truthful and free Russian language!.. Without you, how can I not fall into despair at the sight of everything that is happening at home. But one cannot believe that such a language was not given to a great people!

Parisian doctors Charcot and Jacquot diagnosed the writer with angina pectoris; Soon she was joined by intercostal neuralgia. The last time Turgenev was in Spassky-Lutovinovo was in the summer of 1881. The sick writer spent the winters in Paris, and in the summer he was transported to Bougival to the Viardot estate.

By January 1883 the pain had become so severe that he could not sleep without morphine. He had surgery to remove a neuroma in the lower abdomen, but the surgery helped little because it did not relieve the pain in the thoracic region of the spine. The disease progressed; in March and April the writer suffered so much that those around him began to notice momentary cloudings of reason, caused in part by taking morphine. The writer was fully aware of his imminent death and came to terms with the consequences of the disease, which deprived him of the ability to walk or simply stand.

Death and funeral

The confrontation between " an unimaginably painful illness and an unimaginably strong body"(P.V. Annenkov) ended on August 22 (September 3), 1883 in Bougival near Paris. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev died from myxosarcoma (a malignant tumor of the bones of the spine), at the age of 65. Doctor S.P. Botkin testified that the true cause of death was clarified only after an autopsy, during which his brain was also weighed by physiologists. As it turned out, among those whose brains were weighed, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev had the largest brain (2012 grams, which is almost 600 grams more than the average weight).

Turgenev's death was a great shock for his admirers, resulting in a very impressive funeral. The funeral was preceded by mourning celebrations in Paris, in which over four hundred people took part. Among them were at least a hundred Frenchmen: Edmond Abu, Jules Simon, Emile Ogier, Emile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Juliette Adam, artist Alfred Dieudonnet (Russian) French, composer Jules Massenet. Ernest Renan addressed the mourners with a heartfelt speech. In accordance with the will of the deceased, on September 27, his body was brought to St. Petersburg.

Even from the border station of Verzhbolovo, memorial services were held at stops. On the platform of the St. Petersburg Warsaw Station there was a solemn meeting between the coffin and the body of the writer. Senator A.F. Koni recalled the funeral at the Volkovskoye cemetery:

The reception of the coffin in St. Petersburg and its passage to the Volkovo cemetery presented unusual spectacles in their beauty, majestic character and complete, voluntary and unanimous observance of order. A continuous chain of 176 deputations from literature, from newspapers and magazines, scientists, educational and educational institutions, from zemstvos, Siberians, Poles and Bulgarians occupied a space of several miles, attracting the sympathetic and often moved attention of the huge public, crowding the sidewalks - carried by deputations graceful, magnificent wreaths and banners with meaningful inscriptions. So, there was a wreath “To the Author of “Mumu”” from the Society for the Protection of Animals... a wreath with the inscription “Love is stronger than death” from women’s pedagogical courses...

- A.F. Koni, “Turgenev’s Funeral,” Collected Works in eight volumes. T. 6. M., Legal literature, 1968. Pp. 385-386.

There were some misunderstandings. The day after the funeral of Turgenev’s body in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on Daru Street in Paris, on September 19, the famous emigrant populist P. L. Lavrov published in the Paris newspaper “Justice” (Russian) French, edited by the future socialist Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau a letter in which he reported that I. S. Turgenev, on his own initiative, transferred 500 francs to Lavrov annually for three years to facilitate the publication of the revolutionary emigrant newspaper “Forward”.

Russian liberals were outraged by this news, considering it a provocation. The conservative press represented by M. N. Katkov, on the contrary, took advantage of Lavrov’s message to posthumously persecute Turgenev in the Russky Vestnik and Moskovskiye Vedomosti in order to prevent the honoring in Russia of the deceased writer, whose body “without any publicity, with special caution” should was to arrive in the capital from Paris for burial. The trace of Turgenev's ashes greatly worried the Minister of Internal Affairs D. A. Tolstoy, who feared spontaneous rallies. According to the editor of Vestnik Evropy, M. M. Stasyulevich, who accompanied Turgenev’s body, the precautions taken by officials were as inappropriate as if he were accompanying the Nightingale the Robber, and not the body of the great writer.

Personal life

The first romantic interest of young Turgenev was falling in love with the daughter of Princess Shakhovskaya, Ekaterina (1815-1836), a young poetess. The estates of their parents in the Moscow region bordered, they often exchanged visits. He was 15, she was 19. In letters to her son, Varvara Turgenev called Ekaterina Shakhovskaya a “poet” and a “villain”, since Sergei Nikolaevich himself, Ivan Turgenev’s father, could not resist the charms of the young princess, to whom the girl reciprocated, which broke the heart of the future writer . The episode much later, in 1860, was reflected in the story “First Love,” in which the writer endowed some of the features of Katya Shakhovskaya with the heroine of the story, Zinaida Zasekina.

In 1841, during his return to Lutovinovo, Ivan became interested in the seamstress Dunyasha (Avdotya Ermolaevna Ivanova). A romance began between the young couple, which ended in the girl’s pregnancy. Ivan Sergeevich immediately expressed a desire to marry her. However, his mother made a serious scandal about this, after which he went to St. Petersburg. Turgenev's mother, having learned about Avdotya's pregnancy, hastily sent her to Moscow to her parents, where Pelageya was born on April 26, 1842. Dunyasha was married off, leaving her daughter in an ambiguous position. Turgenev officially recognized the child only in 1857.

Tatiana Bakunina. Portrait by Evdokia Bakunina, mid-19th century.

Soon after the episode with Avdotya Ivanova, Turgenev met Tatyana Bakunina (1815-1871), the sister of the future emigrant revolutionary M.A. Bakunin. Returning to Moscow after his stay in Spassky, he stopped at the Bakunin estate Premukhino. The winter of 1841-1842 was spent in close communication with the circle of Bakunin brothers and sisters. All of Turgenev's friends - N.V. Stankevich, V.G. Belinsky and V.P. Botkin - were in love with Mikhail Bakunin's sisters, Lyubov, Varvara and Alexandra.

Tatyana was three years older than Ivan. Like all young Bakunins, she was passionate about German philosophy and perceived her relationships with others through the prism of Fichte’s idealistic concept. She wrote letters to Turgenev in German, full of lengthy reasoning and self-analysis, despite the fact that the young people lived in the same house, and she also expected from Turgenev an analysis of the motives of her own actions and reciprocal feelings. “The ‘philosophical’ novel,” as G. A. Byaly noted, “in the vicissitudes of which the entire younger generation of Premukha’s nest took an active part, lasted several months.” Tatyana was truly in love. Ivan Sergeevich did not remain completely indifferent to the love he awakened. He wrote several poems (the poem “Parasha” was also inspired by his communication with Bakunina) and a story dedicated to this sublimely ideal, mostly literary and epistolary hobby. But he could not respond with serious feelings.

Among the writer’s other fleeting hobbies, there were two more that played a certain role in his work. In the 1850s, a fleeting romance broke out with a distant cousin, eighteen-year-old Olga Alexandrovna Turgeneva. The love was mutual, and the writer was thinking about marriage in 1854, the prospect of which at the same time frightened him. Olga later served as the prototype for the image of Tatyana in the novel “Smoke”. Turgenev was also indecisive with Maria Nikolaevna Tolstoy. Ivan Sergeevich wrote about Leo Tolstoy’s sister to P.V. Annenkov: “His sister is one of the most attractive creatures I have ever met. Sweet, smart, simple - I couldn’t take my eyes off her. In my old age (I turned 36 on the fourth day) - I almost fell in love.” For the sake of Turgenev, twenty-four-year-old M.N. Tolstaya had already left her husband; she mistook the writer’s attention to herself for true love. But Turgenev limited himself to a platonic hobby, and Maria Nikolaevna served him as a prototype for Verochka from the story “Faust”.

In the fall of 1843, Turgenev first saw Pauline Viardot on the stage of the opera house, when the great singer came on tour to St. Petersburg. Turgenev was 25 years old, Viardot was 22 years old. Then, while hunting, he met Polina’s husband, the director of the Italian Theater in Paris, a famous critic and art critic, Louis Viardot, and on November 1, 1843, he was introduced to Polina herself. Among the mass of fans, she did not particularly single out Turgenev, who was better known as an avid hunter rather than a writer. And when her tour ended, Turgenev, together with the Viardot family, left for Paris against the will of his mother, still unknown to Europe and without money. And this despite the fact that everyone considered him a rich man. But this time his extremely cramped financial situation was explained precisely by his disagreement with his mother, one of the richest women in Russia and the owner of a huge agricultural and industrial empire.

For affection for " damn gypsy“His mother didn’t give him money for three years. During these years, his lifestyle bore little resemblance to the stereotype of the life of a “rich Russian” that had developed about him. In November 1845, he returned to Russia, and in January 1847, having learned about Viardot’s tour in Germany, he left the country again: he went to Berlin, then to London, Paris, a tour of France and again to St. Petersburg. Without an official marriage, Turgenev lived in the Viardot family " on the edge of someone else's nest", as he himself said. Polina Viardot raised Turgenev's illegitimate daughter. In the early 1860s, the Viardot family settled in Baden-Baden, and with them Turgenev (“Villa Tourgueneff”). Thanks to the Viardot family and Ivan Turgenev, their villa became an interesting musical and artistic center. The war of 1870 forced the Viardot family to leave Germany and move to Paris, where the writer also moved.

The true nature of the relationship between Pauline Viardot and Turgenev is still a matter of debate. There is an opinion that after Louis Viardot was paralyzed as a result of a stroke, Polina and Turgenev actually entered into a marital relationship. Louis Viardot was twenty years older than Polina; he died the same year as I. S. Turgenev.

The writer's last love was the actress of the Alexandrinsky Theater Maria Savina. Their meeting took place in 1879, when the young actress was 25 years old and Turgenev was 61 years old. The actress at that time played the role of Verochka in Turgenev’s play “A Month in the Village.” The role was played so vividly that the writer himself was amazed. After this performance, he went to the actress backstage with a large bouquet of roses and exclaimed: “ Did I really write this Verochka?!“Ivan Turgenev fell in love with her, which he openly admitted. The rarity of their meetings was compensated by regular correspondence, which lasted four years. Despite Turgenev's sincere relationship, for Maria he was more of a good friend. She was planning to marry someone else, but the marriage never took place. Savina’s marriage to Turgenev was also not destined to come true - the writer died in the circle of the Viardot family.

"Turgenev girls"

Turgenev's personal life was not entirely successful. Having lived for 38 years in close contact with the Viardot family, the writer felt deeply lonely. Under these conditions, Turgenev’s depiction of love was formed, but love that was not entirely characteristic of his melancholy creative manner. There is almost no happy ending in his works, and the last chord is often sad. But nevertheless, almost none of the Russian writers paid so much attention to the depiction of love; no one idealized a woman to such an extent as Ivan Turgenev.

The characters of the female characters in his works of the 1850s - 1880s - the images of integral, pure, selfless, morally strong heroines in total formed the literary phenomenon " Turgenev's girl" - a typical heroine of his works. These are Liza in the story “The Diary of an Extra Man”, Natalya Lasunskaya in the novel “Rudin”, Asya in the story of the same name, Vera in the story “Faust”, Elizaveta Kalitina in the novel “The Noble Nest”, Elena Stakhova in the novel “On the Eve”, Marianna Sinetskaya in novel "Nov" and others.

L.N. Tolstoy, noting the merits of the writer, said that Turgenev wrote amazing portraits of women, and that Tolstoy himself later observed Turgenev’s women in life.

Offspring

Turgeneva Pelageya (Polina, Polynet) Ivanovna. Photo by E. Karzh, 1870s

Turgenev never started his own family. The writer's daughter from seamstress Avdotya Ermolaevna Ivanova Pelageya Ivanovna Turgeneva, married to Brewer (1842-1919), was raised from the age of eight in the family of Pauline Viardot in France, where Turgenev changed her name from Pelageya to Polina (Polinet, Paulinette), which seemed to him more euphonious. Ivan Sergeevich arrived in France only six years later, when his daughter was already fourteen. Polinette almost forgot the Russian language and spoke exclusively French, which touched her father. At the same time, he was upset that the girl had a difficult relationship with Viardot herself. The girl was hostile to her father's beloved, and soon this led to the fact that the girl was sent to a private boarding school. When Turgenev next came to France, he took his daughter from the boarding school, and they moved in together, and a governess from England, Innis, was invited for Polynet.

At the age of seventeen, Polynette met the young entrepreneur Gaston Brewer (1835-1885), who made a pleasant impression on Ivan Turgenev, and he agreed to his daughter’s marriage. As a dowry, my father gave a considerable amount for those times - 150 thousand francs. The girl married Brewer, who soon went bankrupt, after which Polynette, with the assistance of her father, hid from her husband in Switzerland. Since Turgenev's heir was Polina Viardot, after his death his daughter found herself in a difficult financial situation. She died in 1919 at the age of 76 from cancer. Polynet's children - Georges-Albert and Jeanne - had no descendants. Georges-Albert died in 1924. Zhanna Brewer-Turgeneva never married; She lived by giving private lessons for a living, as she was fluent in five languages. She even tried herself in poetry, writing poems in French. She died in 1952 at the age of 80, and with her the family branch of the Turgenevs along the line of Ivan Sergeevich ended.

Passion for hunting

I. S. Turgenev was at one time one of the most famous hunters in Russia. The love of hunting was instilled in the future writer by his uncle Nikolai Turgenev, a recognized expert in horses and hunting dogs in the area, who raised the boy during his summer holidays in Spassky. He also taught hunting to the future writer A.I. Kupfershmidt, whom Turgenev considered his first teacher. Thanks to him, Turgenev could already call himself a gun hunter in his youth. Even Ivan’s mother, who had previously looked at hunters as slackers, became imbued with her son’s passion. Over the years, the hobby grew into a passion. It happened that he would not let go of his gun for entire seasons, walking thousands of miles across many provinces of central Russia. Turgenev said that hunting is generally characteristic of Russian people, and that Russian people have loved hunting since time immemorial.

In 1837, Turgenev met the peasant hunter Afanasy Alifanov, who later became his frequent hunting companion. The writer bought it for a thousand rubles; he settled in the forest, five miles from Spassky. Afanasy was an excellent storyteller, and Turgenev often came to sit with him over a cup of tea and listen to hunting stories. The story “About Nightingales” (1854) was recorded by the writer from the words of Alifanov. It was Afanasy who became the prototype of Ermolai from “Notes of a Hunter”. He was also known for his talent as a hunter among the writer’s friends - A. A. Fet, I. P. Borisov. When Afanasy died in 1872, Turgenev was very sorry for his old hunting companion and asked his manager to provide possible assistance to his daughter Anna.

In 1839, the writer’s mother, describing the tragic consequences of the fire that occurred in Spassky, did not forget to say: “ your gun is intact, but the dog is crazy" The fire that occurred accelerated Ivan Turgenev’s arrival in Spasskoye. In the summer of 1839, he first went hunting in the Teleginsky swamps (on the border of Bolkhovsky and Oryol districts), visited the Lebedyansk fair, which was reflected in the story “Swan” (1847). Varvara Petrovna purchased five packs of greyhounds, nine pairs of hounds and horses with saddles especially for him.

In the summer of 1843, Ivan Sergeevich lived at his dacha in Pavlovsk and also hunted a lot. That year he met Polina Viardot. The writer was introduced to her with the words: “ This is a young Russian landowner. A good hunter and a bad poet" The actress's husband, Louis, was, like Turgenev, a passionate hunter. Ivan Sergeevich invited him more than once to go hunting in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. They repeatedly went hunting with friends to the Novgorod province and Finland. And Polina Viardot gave Turgenev a beautiful and expensive yagdtash.

« I. S. Turgenev on the hunt", (1879). N. D. Dmitriev-Orenburgsky

At the end of the 1840s, the writer lived abroad and worked on “Notes of a Hunter.” The writer spent 1852-1853 in Spassky under police supervision. But this exile did not depress him, since a hunt awaited him in the village again, and it was quite successful. And the next year he went on hunting expeditions 150 miles from Spassky, where, together with I.F. Yurasov, he hunted on the banks of the Desna. This expedition served as material for Turgenev to work on the story “A Trip to Polesie” (1857).

In August 1854, Turgenev, together with N.A. Nekrasov, came to hunt at the estate of titular adviser I.I. Maslov Osmino, after which both continued to hunt in Spassky. In the mid-1850s, Turgenev met the family of Count Tolstoy. L.N. Tolstoy's elder brother, Nikolai, also turned out to be an avid hunter and, together with Turgenev, made several hunting trips around Spassky and Nikolsko-Vyazemsky. Sometimes they were accompanied by M.N. Tolstoy’s husband, Valerian Petrovich; some traits of his character were reflected in the image of Priimkov in the story “Faust” (1855). In the summer of 1855, Turgenev did not hunt due to a cholera epidemic, but in subsequent seasons he tried to make up for lost time. Together with N.N. Tolstoy, the writer visited Pirogovo, the estate of S.N. Tolstoy, who preferred to hunt with greyhounds and had beautiful horses and dogs. Turgenev, on the other hand, preferred to hunt with a gun and a gun dog, and mainly for feathered game.

Turgenev kept a kennel of seventy hounds and sixty greyhounds. Together with N.N. Tolstoy, A.A. Fet and A.T. Alifanov, he made a number of hunting expeditions in the central Russian provinces. In 1860-1870, Turgenev mainly lived abroad. He also tried to recreate the rituals and atmosphere of Russian hunting abroad, but from all this only a distant similarity was obtained, even when he, together with Louis Viardot, managed to rent quite decent hunting grounds. In the spring of 1880, having visited Spasskoye, Turgenev made a special trip to Yasnaya Polyana with the goal of persuading L.N. Tolstoy to take part in the Pushkin celebrations. Tolstoy refused the invitation because he considered gala dinners and liberal toasts inappropriate in the face of the starving Russian peasantry. Nevertheless, Turgenev fulfilled his old dream - he hunted with Leo Tolstoy. A whole hunting circle even formed around Turgenev - N. A. Nekrasov, A. A. Fet, A. N. Ostrovsky, N. N. and L. N. Tolstoy, artist P. P. Sokolov (illustrator of “Notes of a Hunter”) . In addition, he had the opportunity to hunt with the German writer Karl Müller, as well as with representatives of the reigning houses of Russia and Germany - Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich and the Prince of Hesse.

Ivan Turgenev, with a gun on his back, walked into the Oryol, Tula, Tambov, Kursk, and Kaluga provinces. He was well acquainted with the best hunting grounds of England, France, and Germany. He wrote three specialized works devoted to hunting: “On the notes of the gun hunter of the Orenburg province S. T. Aksakov,” “Notes of the gun hunter of the Orenburg province” and “Fifty shortcomings of a gun hunter or fifty shortcomings of a pointer dog.”

Towards the end of his life, the decrepit Ivan Turgenev repented on his deathbed of killing woodcocks, black grouse, great snipes, ducks, partridges and other wild birds while hunting.

Characteristics and writer's life

Address to Turgenev from the editors of Sovremennik, watercolor by D. V. Grigorovich, 1857

Biographers of Turgenev noted the unique features of his life as a writer. From his youth, he combined intelligence, education, and artistic talent with passivity, a tendency toward introspection, and indecisiveness. All together, in a bizarre way, it combined with the habits of the little baron, who had been dependent for a long time on his domineering, despotic mother. Turgenev recalled that at the University of Berlin, while studying Hegel, he could give up his studies when he needed to train his dog or set it on rats. T. N. Granovsky, who came to his apartment, found the philosophy student playing card soldiers with a serf servant (Porfiry Kudryashov). The childishness smoothed out over the years, but internal duality and immaturity of views made themselves felt for a long time: according to A. Ya. Panaeva, young Ivan wanted to be accepted both in literary society and in secular drawing rooms, while in secular society Turgenev was ashamed to admit about his literary earnings, which spoke of his false and frivolous attitude towards literature and the title of writer at that time.

The writer’s cowardice in his youth is evidenced by an episode in 1838 in Germany, when during a trip there was a fire on a ship, and the passengers miraculously managed to escape. Turgenev, who feared for his life, asked one of the sailors to save him and promised him a reward from his rich mother if he managed to fulfill his request. Other passengers testified that the young man plaintively exclaimed: “ To die so young!”, while pushing women and children away from the rescue boats. Fortunately, the shore was not far. Once on the shore, the young man was ashamed of his cowardice. Rumors of his cowardice permeated society and became the subject of ridicule. The event played a certain negative role in the subsequent life of the author and was described by Turgenev himself in the short story “Fire at Sea.”

Researchers note another character trait of Turgenev, which brought him and those around him a lot of trouble - his lack of responsibility, “all-Russian negligence” or “Oblomovism,” as E. A. Solovyov writes. Ivan Sergeevich could invite guests to his place and soon forget about it, going somewhere else on his own business; he could have promised a story to N.A. Nekrasov for the next issue of Sovremennik, or even taken an advance from A.A. Kraevsky and not delivered the promised manuscript in a timely manner. Ivan Sergeevich himself later warned the younger generation against such annoying little things. A victim of this optionality once became the Polish-Russian revolutionary Arthur Benny, who was slanderously accused in Russia of being an agent of Section III. This accusation could only be dispelled by A. I. Herzen, to whom Benny wrote a letter and asked him to convey it with the opportunity to I. S. Turgenev in London. Turgenev forgot about the letter, which had lain unsent for over two months. During this time, rumors of Benny's betrayal reached catastrophic proportions. The letter, which reached Herzen very late, could not change anything in Benny’s reputation.

The reverse side of these flaws was spiritual gentleness, breadth of nature, a certain generosity, gentleness, but his kindness had its limits. When, during his last visit to Spasskoye, he saw that the mother, who did not know how to please her beloved son, lined up all the serfs along the alley to greet the barchuk “ loud and joyful", Ivan became angry with his mother, immediately turned around and left back for St. Petersburg. They did not see each other again until her death, and even lack of money could not shake his decision. Among Turgenev's character traits, Ludwig Pietsch singled out his modesty. Abroad, where his work was still poorly known, Turgenev never boasted to those around him that in Russia he was already considered a famous writer. Having become the independent owner of his mother's inheritance, Turgenev did not show any concern for his grains and harvests. Unlike Leo Tolstoy, he did not have any mastery in him.

He calls himself " the most careless of Russian landowners" The writer did not delve into the management of his estate, entrusting it either to his uncle, or to the poet N.S. Tyutchev, or even to random people. Turgenev was very wealthy, he had no less than 20 thousand rubles a year in income from the land, but at the same time he always needed money, spending it very unscrupulously. The habits of the broad Russian gentleman made themselves felt. Turgenev's literary fees were also very significant. He was one of the highest paid writers in Russia. Each edition of “Notes of a Hunter” provided him with 2,500 rubles of net income. The right to publish his works cost 20-25 thousand rubles.

The meaning and evaluation of creativity

Extra people in the image of Turgenev

“The Noble Nest” on the stage of the Maly Theater, Lavretsky - A. I. Sumbatov-Yuzhin, Lisa - Elena Leshkovskaya (1895)

Despite the fact that the tradition of depicting “extra people” arose before Turgenev (Chatsky A. S. Griboedova, Evgeny Onegin A. S. Pushkin, Pechorin M. Yu. Lermontova, Beltov A. I. Herzen, Aduev Jr. in “Ordinary History "I. A. Goncharova), Turgenev has priority in defining this type of literary characters. The name “The Extra Man” was established after the publication of Turgenev’s story “The Diary of an Extra Man” in 1850. “Superfluous people” were, as a rule, distinguished by the general features of intellectual superiority over others and at the same time passivity, mental discord, skepticism towards the realities of the outside world, and a discrepancy between word and deed. Turgenev created a whole gallery of similar images: Chulkaturin (“The Diary of an Extra Man,” 1850), Rudin (“Rudin,” 1856), Lavretsky (“The Noble Nest,” 1859), Nezhdanov (“Nov,” 1877). Turgenev’s novels and stories “Asya”, “Yakov Pasynkov”, “Correspondence” and others are also devoted to the problem of the “superfluous person”.

The main character of “The Diary of an Extra Man” is marked by the desire to analyze all his emotions, to record the slightest shades of the state of his own soul. Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the hero notices the unnaturalness and tension of his thoughts, the lack of will: “ I analyzed myself to the last thread, compared myself with others, recalled the slightest glances, smiles, words of people... Entire days passed in this painful, fruitless work" Self-analysis, which corrodes the soul, gives the hero unnatural pleasure: “ Only after my expulsion from the Ozhogins’ house did I painfully learn how much pleasure a person can derive from the contemplation of his own misfortune" The failure of apathetic and reflective characters was even more emphasized by the images of Turgenev’s integral and strong heroines.

The result of Turgenev’s thoughts about heroes of the Rudin and Chulkaturin type was the article “Hamlet and Don Quixote” (1859). The least “hamletic” of all Turgenev’s “superfluous people” is the hero of “The Noble Nest” Lavretsky. One of its main characters, Alexei Dmitrievich Nezhdanov, is called the “Russian Hamlet” in the novel “Nov”.

Simultaneously with Turgenev, the phenomenon of the “superfluous man” continued to be developed by I. A. Goncharov in the novel “Oblomov” (1859), N. A. Nekrasov - Agarin (“Sasha”, 1856), A. F. Pisemsky and many others. But, unlike Goncharov’s character, Turgenev’s heroes were subject to greater typification. According to the Soviet literary critic A. Lavretsky (I.M. Frenkel), “If we had all the sources for studying the 40s. If there was only one “Rudin” or one “Noble Nest” left, then it would still be possible to establish the character of the era in its specific features. According to Oblomov, we are not able to do this.”

Later, the tradition of depicting Turgenev’s “superfluous people” was ironically played up by A.P. Chekhov. The character of his story "Duel" Laevsky is a reduced and parodic version of Turgenev's superfluous man. He tells his friend von Koren: “ I'm a loser, an extra person" Von Koren agrees that Laevsky is “ chip from Rudin" At the same time, he speaks of Laevsky’s claim to be “an extra person” in a mocking tone: “ Understand this, they say, that it is not his fault that government packages lie unopened for weeks and that he himself drinks and gets others drunk, but Onegin, Pechorin and Turgenev are to blame for this, who invented a loser and an extra person" Later critics brought Rudin's character closer to the character of Turgenev himself.

On the stage

Set design sketch for “A Month in the Country”, M. V. Dobuzhinsky, 1909

By the mid-1850s, Turgenev became disillusioned with his calling as a playwright. Critics declared his plays unstageable. The author seemed to agree with the opinion of the critics and stopped writing for the Russian stage, but in 1868-1869 he wrote four French operetta librettos for Pauline Viardot, intended for production at the Baden-Baden theater. L.P. Grossman noted the validity of many critics’ reproaches against Turgenev’s plays for the lack of movement in them and the predominance of the conversational element. Nevertheless, he pointed out the paradoxical vitality of Turgenev's productions on stage. Ivan Sergeevich's plays have not left the repertoire of European and Russian theaters for over one hundred and sixty years. Famous Russian performers played in them: P. A. Karatygin, V. V. Samoilov, V. V. Samoilova (Samoilova 2nd), A. E. Martynov, V. I. Zhivokini, M. P. Sadovsky, S. V. Shumsky, V. N. Davydov, K. A. Varlamov, M. G. Savina, G. N. Fedotova, V. F. Komissarzhevskaya, K. S. Stanislavsky, V. I. Kachalov, M. N. Ermolova and others.

Turgenev the playwright was widely recognized in Europe. His plays were successful on the stages of the Antoine Theater in Paris, the Vienna Burgtheater, the Munich Chamber Theater, Berlin, Königsberg and other German theaters. Turgenev's dramaturgy was in the selected repertoire of outstanding Italian tragedians: Ermete Novelli, Tommaso Salvini, Ernesto Rossi, Ermete Zacconi, Austrian, German and French actors Adolf von Sonnenthal, Andre Antoine, Charlotte Voltaire and Franziska Elmenreich.

Of all his plays, the greatest success was A Month in the Country. The performance debuted in 1872. At the beginning of the 20th century, the play was staged at the Moscow Art Theater by K. S. Stanislavsky and I. M. Moskvin. The set designer for the production and the author of the sketches for the costumes of the characters was the world art artist M. V. Dobuzhinsky. This play has not left the stage of Russian theaters to this day. Even during the author’s lifetime, theaters began to stage his novels and stories with varying degrees of success: “The Noble Nest”, “King Lear of the Steppes”, “Spring Waters”. This tradition is continued by modern theaters.

In the assessments of contemporaries of the 19th century

Caricature by A. M. Volkov on Turgenev’s novel “Smoke.”
"Spark". 1867. No. 14.
- What an unpleasant smell - fi!
- The smoke of dying fame, the smoke of smoldering talent...
- Shh, gentlemen! And Turgenev’s smoke is sweet and pleasant to us!

Contemporaries gave Turgenev's work a very high rating. Critics V. G. Belinsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov, D. I. Pisarev, A. V. Druzhinin, P. V. Annenkov, Apollon Grigoriev, V. P. Botkin, N. N. made a critical analysis of his works. Strakhov, V. P. Burenin, K. S. Aksakov, I. S. Aksakov, N. K. Mikhailovsky, K. N. Leontyev, A. S. Suvorin, P. L. Lavrov, S. S. Dudyshkin, P. N. Tkachev, N. I. Solovyov, M. A. Antonovich, M. N. Longinov, M. F. De-Pule, N. V. Shelgunov, N. G. Chernyshevsky and many others.

Thus, V. G. Belinsky noted the writer’s extraordinary skill in depicting Russian nature. According to N.V. Gogol, Turgenev had the most talent in Russian literature of that time. N.A. Dobrolyubov wrote that as soon as Turgenev touched upon any issue or new aspect of social relations in his story, these problems arose in the consciousness of an educated society, appearing before everyone’s eyes. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin stated that Turgenev’s literary activity was of equal importance to society as the activities of Nekrasov, Belinsky and Dobrolyubov. According to the Russian literary critic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, S. A. Vengerov, the writer managed to write so realistically that it was difficult to grasp the line between literary fiction and real life. His novels were not only read, but his heroes were imitated in life. In each of his major works there is a character in whose mouth the subtle and apt wit of the writer himself is put.

Turgenev was also well known in contemporary Western Europe. His works were translated into German back in the 1850s, and in the 1870s-1880s he became the most beloved and most read Russian writer in Germany, and German critics rated him as one of the most significant modern short story writers. Turgenev's first translators were August Wiedert, August Boltz and Paul Fuchs. The translator of many of Turgenev’s works into German, the German writer F. Bodenstedt, in the introduction to “Russian Fragments” (1861), argued that Turgenev’s works are equal to the works of the best modern short story writers in England, Germany and France. Chancellor of the German Empire Clovis Hohenlohe (1894-1900), who called Ivan Turgenev the best candidate for the post of Prime Minister of Russia, spoke of the writer as follows: “ Today I spoke with the smartest man in Russia».

Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter” were popular in France. Guy de Maupassant called the writer " great man" And " a brilliant novelist", and George Sand wrote to Turgenev: " Teacher! We all must go through your school" His work was also well known in English literary circles - “Notes of a Hunter”, “The Noble Nest”, “On the Eve” and “New” were translated in England. Western readers were captivated by the moral purity in the depiction of love, the image of a Russian woman (Elena Stakhova); I was struck by the figure of the militant democrat Bazarov. The writer managed to show European society the true Russia, he introduced foreign readers to the Russian peasant, to the Russian commoners and revolutionaries, to the Russian intelligentsia and revealed the image of the Russian woman. Thanks to Turgenev’s work, foreign readers absorbed the great traditions of the Russian realistic school.

Leo Tolstoy gave the following characterization to the writer in a letter to A.N. Pypin (January 1884): “Turgenev is a wonderful person (not very deep, very weak, but a kind, good person), who always says exactly what he thinks and feels "

In the encyclopedic dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron

Novel "Fathers and Sons". Published 1880, Leipzig, Germany

According to the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia, “Notes of a Hunter,” in addition to the usual readership success, played a certain historical role. The book made a strong impression even on the heir to the throne, Alexander II, who a few years later carried out a number of reforms to abolish serfdom in Russia. Many representatives of the ruling classes were also impressed by the Notes. The book carried a social protest, denouncing serfdom, but serfdom itself was directly touched upon in “Notes of a Hunter” with restraint and caution. The content of the book was not fictitious; it convinced readers that people should not be deprived of the most basic human rights. But, in addition to protest, the stories also had artistic value, carrying a soft and poetic flavor. According to the literary critic S. A. Vengerov, the landscape painting of “Notes of a Hunter” became one of the best in Russian literature of that time. All the best qualities of Turgenev’s talent were vividly expressed in his essays. " The great, powerful, truthful and free Russian language“, to which the last of his “Poems in Prose” (1878-1882) is dedicated, received its most noble and elegant expression in “Notes”.

In the novel “Rudin” the author managed to successfully portray the generation of the 1840s. To some extent, Rudin himself is the image of the famous Hegelian agitator M.A. Bakunin, whom Belinsky spoke of as a person “ with blush on your cheeks and no blood in your heart" Rudin appeared in an era when society dreamed of “business.” The author's version of the novel was not passed by the censors due to the episode of Rudin's death at the June barricades, and therefore was understood by critics in a very one-sided way. According to the author, Rudin was a richly gifted man with noble intentions, but at the same time he was completely lost in the face of reality; he knew how to passionately appeal and captivate others, but at the same time he himself was completely devoid of passion and temperament. The hero of the novel has become a household name for those people whose words do not agree with deeds. The writer generally did not particularly spare his favorite heroes, even the best representatives of the Russian noble class of the mid-19th century. He often emphasized passivity and lethargy in their characters, as well as traits of moral helplessness. This showed the realism of the writer, who depicted life as it is.

But if in “Rudin” Turgenev spoke only against the idle chattering people of the generation of the forties, then in “The Noble Nest” his criticism fell against his entire generation; without the slightest bitterness he gave preference to young forces. In the person of the heroine of this novel, a simple Russian girl, Lisa, a collective image of many women of that time is shown, when the meaning of a woman’s whole life was reduced to love, having failed in which, a woman was deprived of any purpose of existence. Turgenev foresaw the emergence of a new type of Russian woman, which he placed at the center of his next novel. Russian society of that time lived on the eve of radical social and state changes. And the heroine of Turgenev’s novel “On the Eve”, Elena, became the personification of the vague desire for something good and new, characteristic of the first years of the reform era, without a clear idea of ​​​​this new and good. It is no coincidence that the novel was called “On the Eve” - in it Shubin ends his elegy with the question: “ When will our time come? When will we have people?"To which his interlocutor expresses hope for the best: " Give it time,” answered Uvar Ivanovich, “they will" On the pages of Sovremennik, the novel received an enthusiastic assessment in Dobrolyubov’s article “When will the real day come.”

In the next novel, “Fathers and Sons,” one of the most characteristic features of Russian literature of that time was most fully expressed - the closest connection of literature with the real currents of public sentiment. Turgenev managed better than other writers to capture the moment of unanimity of public consciousness, which in the second half of the 1850s buried the old Nicholas era with its lifeless reactionary isolation, and the turning point of the era: the subsequent confusion of innovators who singled out from their midst moderate representatives of the older generation with their vague hopes for a better future - for the “fathers”, and for the younger generation, thirsty for fundamental changes in the social order - the “children”. The magazine “Russian Word”, represented by D.I. Pisarev, even recognized the hero of the novel, the radical Bazarov, as its ideal. At the same time, if you look at the image of Bazarov from a historical point of view, as a type reflecting the mood of the sixties of the 19th century, then it is rather not fully revealed, since socio-political radicalism, quite strong at that time, is almost absent from the novel. was affected.

While living abroad, in Paris, the writer became close to many emigrants and foreign youth. He again had a desire to write about the topic of the day - about the revolutionary “going to the people”, as a result of which his largest novel, Nov, appeared. But, despite his efforts, Turgenev failed to grasp the most characteristic features of the Russian revolutionary movement. His mistake was that he made the center of the novel one of the weak-willed people typical of his works, who could be characteristic of the generation of the 1840s, but not of the 1870s. The novel did not receive high praise from critics. Of the writer’s later works, the “Song of Triumphant Love” and “Prose Poems” attracted the most attention.

XIX-XX century

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, critics and literary scholars S. A. Vengerov, Yu. I. Aikhenvald, D. S. Merezhkovsky, D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, A. I. Nezelenov, turned to the work of I. S. Turgenev, Yu. N. Govorukha-Otrok, V. V. Rozanov, A. E. Gruzinsky, E. A. Solovyov-Andreevich, L. A. Tikhomirov, V. E. Cheshikhin-Vetrinsky, A. F. Koni, A. G. Gornfeld, F. D. Batyushkov, V. V. Stasov, G. V. Plekhanov, K. D. Balmont, P. P. Pertsov, M. O. Gershenzon, P. A. Kropotkin, R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik and others.

According to the literary scholar and theater critic Yu. I. Aikhenvald, who gave his assessment of the writer at the beginning of the century, Turgenev was not a deep writer, he wrote superficially and in light tones. According to the critic, the writer took life lightly. Knowing all the passions, possibilities and depths of human consciousness, the writer, however, did not have true seriousness: “ A tourist of life, he visits everything, looks everywhere, does not stop anywhere for long, and at the end of his road he laments that the journey is over, that there is nowhere else to go. Rich, meaningful, varied, it does not, however, have pathos or genuine seriousness. His softness is his weakness. He showed reality, but first took out its tragic core" According to Aikhenvald, Turgenev is easy to read, easy to live with, but he does not want to worry himself and does not want his readers to worry. The critic also reproached the writer for the monotony in the use of artistic techniques. But at the same time he called Turgenev “ patriot of Russian nature"for his celebrated landscapes of his native land.

The author of an article about I. S. Turgenev in the six-volume “History of Russian Literature of the 19th Century” (1911) edited by Professor D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, A. E. Gruzinsky explains the critics’ claims to Turgenev as follows. In his opinion, in Turgenev’s work, most of all, they were looking for answers to the living questions of our time, the formulation of new social problems. " This element of his novels and stories alone was, in fact, taken seriously and carefully by the guiding criticism of the 50s and 60s; it was considered obligatory in Turgenev’s work" Having not received answers to their questions in the new works, the critics were dissatisfied and reprimanded the author “ for failure to fulfill his public duties" As a result, the author was declared exhausted and wasting his talent. Gruzinsky calls this approach to Turgenev’s work one-sided and erroneous. Turgenev was not a writer-prophet, a writer-citizen, although he connected all his major works with important and burning themes of his turbulent era, but most of all he was an artist-poet, and his interest in public life was, rather, in the nature of careful analysis .

Critic E. A. Solovyov joins this conclusion. He also draws attention to the mission of Turgenev as a translator of Russian literature for European readers. Thanks to him, soon almost all the best works of Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy were translated into foreign languages. " No one, we note, was better suited to this high and difficult task than Turgenev.<…>By the very essence of his talent, he was not only Russian, but also a European, world-wide writer"- writes E. A. Solovyov. Dwelling on the way of depicting the love of Turgenev’s girls, he makes the following observation: “ Turgenev's heroines fall in love immediately and love only once, and this is for the rest of their lives. They are obviously from the tribe of poor Azdras, for whom love and death were equivalent<…>Love and death, love and death are his inseparable artistic associations" In the character of Turgenev, the critic also finds much of what the writer portrayed in his hero Rudin: “ Undoubted chivalry and not particularly high vanity, idealism and a tendency towards melancholy, a huge mind and a broken will».

The representative of decadent criticism in Russia, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, had an ambivalent attitude towards Turgenev’s work. He did not appreciate Turgenev’s novels, preferring “small prose” to them, especially the so-called “mysterious stories and tales” of the writer. According to Merezhkovsky, Ivan Turgenev is the first impressionist artist, the forerunner of the later symbolists: “ The value of Turgenev the artist for the literature of the future<…>in the creation of an impressionistic style, which represents an artistic formation unrelated to the work of this writer as a whole».

Symbolist poet and critic Maximilian Voloshin wrote that Turgenev, thanks to his artistic sophistication, which he learned from French writers, occupies a special place in Russian literature. But unlike French literature with its fragrant and fresh sensuality, the feeling of living and loving flesh, Turgenev bashfully and dreamily idealized a woman. In Voloshin’s contemporary literature, he saw a connection between Ivan Bunin’s prose and Turgenev’s landscape sketches.

Subsequently, the topic of Bunin's superiority over Turgenev in landscape prose will be repeatedly raised by literary critics. Even L.N. Tolstoy, according to the recollections of pianist A.B. Goldenweiser, said about the description of nature in Bunin’s story: “it is raining,” and it is written so that Turgenev would not have written like that, and there is nothing to say about me.” Both Turgenev and Bunin were united by the fact that both were writer-poets, writers-hunters, writers-nobles and authors of “noble” stories. Nevertheless, the singer of the “sad poetry of ruined noble nests,” Bunin, according to the literary critic Fyodor Stepun, “as an artist is much more sensual than Turgenev.” “The nature of Bunin, for all the realistic accuracy of his writing, is still completely different from that of our two greatest realists - Tolstoy and Turgenev. Bunin’s nature is more unstable, more musical, more psychic and, perhaps, even more mystical than the nature of Tolstoy and Turgenev.” Nature in Turgenev’s depiction is more static than in Bunin’s, says F.A. Stepun, despite the fact that Turgenev has more purely external picturesqueness and picturesqueness.

Russian language

From "Poems in Prose"

In days of doubt, in days of painful thoughts about the fate of my homeland, you alone are my support and support, oh great, mighty, truthful and free Russian language! Without you, how can one not fall into despair at the sight of everything that is happening at home? But one cannot believe that such a language was not given to a great people!

In the Soviet Union, Turgenev’s work was paid attention not only by critics and literary scholars, but also by the leaders and leaders of the Soviet state: V. I. Lenin, M. I. Kalinin, A. V. Lunacharsky. Scientific literary criticism largely depended on the ideological guidelines of “party” literary criticism. Among those who contributed to Turgen studies are G. N. Pospelov, N. L. Brodsky, B. L. Modzalevsky, V. E. Evgeniev-Maksimov, M. B. Khrapchenko, G. A. Byaly, S. M. Petrov, A. I. Batyuto, G. B. Kurlyandskaya, N. I. Prutskov, Yu. V. Mann, Priyma F. Ya., A. B. Muratov, V. I. Kuleshov, V. M. Markovich, V. G. Fridlyand, K. I. Chukovsky, B. V. Tomashevsky, B. M. Eikhenbaum, V. B. Shklovsky, Yu. G. Oksman A. S. Bushmin, M. P. Alekseev and etc.

Turgenev was repeatedly quoted by V.I. Lenin, who especially highly valued him “ great and mighty" language. M.I. Kalinin said that Turgenev’s work had not only artistic, but also socio-political significance, which gave artistic brilliance to his works, and that the writer showed in the serf peasant a man who, like all people, deserves to have human rights. A.V. Lunacharsky, in his lecture dedicated to the work of Ivan Turgenev, called him one of the creators of Russian literature. According to A. M. Gorky, Turgenev left an “excellent legacy” to Russian literature.

According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the artistic system created by the writer influenced the poetics of not only Russian, but also Western European novels of the second half of the 19th century. It largely served as the basis for the “intellectual” novel by L. N. Tolstoy and F. M. Dostoevsky, in which the fate of the central characters depends on their solution to an important philosophical question of universal significance. The literary principles laid down by the writer were developed in the works of many Soviet writers - A. N. Tolstoy, K. G. Paustovsky and others. His plays became an integral part of the repertoire of Soviet theaters. Many of Turgenev's works were filmed. Soviet literary scholars paid great attention to the creative heritage of Turgenev - many works were published devoted to the life and work of the writer, to the study of his role in the Russian and world literary process. Scientific studies of his texts were carried out, and commented collected works were published. Turgenev museums were opened in the city of Orel and the former estate of his mother, Spassky-Lutovinovo.

According to the academic “History of Russian Literature”, Turgenev became the first in Russian literature who managed in his work, through pictures of everyday village life and various images of ordinary peasants, to express the idea that the enslaved people constitute the root, the living soul of the nation. And the literary critic Professor V.M. Markovich said that Turgenev was one of the first to try to portray the inconsistency of the people’s character without embellishment, and he was the first to show the same people worthy of admiration, admiration and love.

Soviet literary critic G.N. Pospelov wrote that Turgenev’s literary style can be called realistic, despite its emotional and romantic elation. Turgenev saw the social weakness of the advanced people from the nobility and looked for another force capable of leading the Russian liberation movement; he later saw such strength in the Russian democrats of 1860-1870.

Foreign criticism

I. S. Turgenev is an honorary doctor of the University of Oxford. Photo by A. Liber, 1879

Of the emigrant writers and literary critics, V.V. Nabokov, B.K. Zaitsev, and D.P. Svyatopolk-Mirsky turned to Turgenev’s work. Many foreign writers and critics also left their reviews of Turgenev’s work: Friedrich Bodenstedt, Emile Oman, Ernest Renan, Melchior de Vogüe, Saint-Beuve, Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Edmond de Goncourt, Emile Zola, Henry James, John Galsworthy, George Sand, Virginia Woolf, Anatole France, James Joyce, William Rolston, Alphonse Daudet, Theodore Storm, Hippolyte Taine, Georg Brandes, Thomas Carlyle and so on.

The English prose writer and Nobel Prize winner in literature John Galsworthy considered Turgenev's novels to be the greatest example of prose art and noted that Turgenev helped " bring the proportions of the novel to perfection" For him Turgenev was “ the most sophisticated poet who ever wrote novels", and the Turgenev tradition was important for Galsworthy.

Another British writer, literary critic and representative of modernist literature of the first half of the 20th century, Virginia Woolf, noted that Turgenev’s books not only touch with their poetry, but also seem to belong to today’s time, so they have not lost the perfection of form. She wrote that Ivan Turgenev is characterized by a rare quality: a sense of symmetry and balance, which give a generalized and harmonious picture of the world. At the same time, she made a reservation that this symmetry triumphs not at all because he is such a great storyteller. On the contrary, Woolf believed that some of his stories were rather poorly told, since they contained loops and digressions, confusing, unintelligible information about great-grandparents (as in “The Noble Nest”). But she pointed out that Turgenev’s books are not a sequence of episodes, but a sequence of emotions emanating from the central character, and it is not objects that are connected in them, but feelings, and when you finish reading the book, you experience aesthetic satisfaction. Another famous representative of modernism, Russian and American writer and literary critic V.V. Nabokov, in his “Lectures on Russian Literature,” spoke of Turgenev not as a great writer, but called him “ cute" Nabokov noted that Turgenev’s landscapes were good, “Turgenev’s girls” were charming, and he spoke approvingly of the musicality of Turgenev’s prose. And he called the novel “Fathers and Sons” one of the most brilliant works of the 19th century. But he also pointed out the writer’s shortcomings, saying that he “ gets bogged down in disgusting sweetness" According to Nabokov, Turgenev was often too straightforward and did not trust the reader’s intuition, himself trying to dot the i’s. Another modernist, the Irish writer James Joyce, especially singled out “Notes of a Hunter” from the entire work of the Russian writer, which, in his opinion, “ penetrate deeper into life than his novels" Joyce believed that it was from them that Turgenev developed as a great international writer.

According to researcher D. Peterson, the American reader was struck by Turgenev’s “ manner of narration... far from both Anglo-Saxon moralizing and French frivolity" According to the critic, the model of realism created by Turgenev had a great influence on the formation of realistic principles in the work of American writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

XXI Century

In Russia, much attention is paid to the study and memory of Turgenev’s work in the 21st century. Every five years, the State Literature Museum of I. S. Turgenev in Orel, together with Oryol State University and the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, holds major scientific conferences that have international status. As part of the “Turgenev Autumn” project, the museum annually hosts Turgenev readings, in which researchers of the writer’s work from Russia and abroad take part. Turgenev anniversaries are also celebrated in other cities of Russia. In addition, his memory is celebrated abroad. Thus, in the Ivan Turgenev Museum in Bougival, which opened on the 100th anniversary of the writer’s death on September 3, 1983, so-called music salons are held annually, where the music of composers from the times of Ivan Turgenev and Pauline Viardot is heard.

Statements of Turgenev

“No matter what a person prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer boils down to the following: “Great God, make sure that two and two do not become four!”

Illustrators of works

Jacob the Turk sings (“The Singers”). Illustration by B. M. Kustodiev for “Notes of a Hunter”, 1908

Over the years, the works of I. S. Turgenev were illustrated by illustrators and graphic artists P. M. Boklevsky, N. D. Dmitriev-Orenburgsky, A. A. Kharlamov, V. V. Pukirev, P. P. Sokolov, V. M. Vasnetsov, D. N. Kardovsky, V. A. Taburin, K. I. Rudakov, V. A. Sveshnikov, P. F. Stroev, N. A. Benois, B. M. Kustodiev, K. V. Lebedev and others. The imposing figure of Turgenev is captured in the sculpture of A. N. Belyaev, M. M. Antokolsky, Zh. A. Polonskaya, S. A. Lavrentieva, in the drawings of D. V. Grigorovich, A. A. Bakunin, K. A. Gorbunov, I. N. Kramsky, Adolf Menzel, Pauline Viardot, Ludwig Pietsch, M. M. Antokolsky, K. Shamro, in caricatures by N. A. Stepanov, A. I. Lebedev, V. I. Porfiryev, A. M. Volkov , in the engraving of Yu. S. Baranovsky, in the portraits of E. Lamy, A. P. Nikitin, V. G. Perov, I. E. Repin, Ya. P. Polonsky, V. V. Vereshchagin, V. V. Mate , E. K. Lipgart, A. A. Kharlamov, V. A. Bobrova. The works of many painters “based on Turgenev” are known: Ya. P. Polonsky (plots by Spassky-Lutovinov), S. Yu. Zhukovsky (“Poetry of an old noble nest”, “Night”), V. G. Perov, (“Old parents at his son's grave"). Ivan Sergeevich himself drew well and was an auto-illustrator of his own works.

Film adaptations

Many films and television films have been made based on the works of Ivan Turgenev. His works formed the basis for paintings created in different countries of the world. The first film adaptations appeared at the beginning of the 20th century (the era of silent films). The film “The Freeloader” was filmed twice in Italy (1913 and 1924). In 1915, the films “The Noble Nest”, “After Death” (based on the story “Klara Milich”) and “Song of Triumphant Love” (with the participation of V.V. Kholodnaya and V.A. Polonsky) were shot in the Russian Empire. The story “Spring Waters” was filmed 8 times in different countries. Four films were made based on the novel “The Noble Nest”; based on stories from “Notes of a Hunter” - 4 films; based on the comedy “A Month in the Country” - 10 TV films; based on the story “Mumu” ​​- 2 feature films and a cartoon; based on the play “Freeloader” - 5 paintings. The novel “Fathers and Sons” served as the basis for 4 films and a television series, the story “First Love” formed the basis for nine feature films and television films.

The image of Turgenev was used in cinema by director Vladimir Khotinenko. In the 2011 television series Dostoevsky, the role of the writer was played by actor Vladimir Simonov. In the film “Belinsky” by Grigory Kozintsev (1951), the role of Turgenev was played by actor Igor Litovkin, and in the film “Tchaikovsky” directed by Igor Talankin (1969), the writer was played by actor Bruno Freundlich.

Addresses

In Moscow

Biographers count over fifty addresses and memorable places in Moscow associated with Turgenev.

• 1824 - house of state councilor A.V. Kopteva on Bolshaya Nikitskaya (not preserved);
• 1827 - city estate, Valuev's property - Sadovaya-Samotyochnaya street, 12/2 (not preserved - rebuilt);
• 1829 - Krause boarding house, Armenian Institute - Armenian Lane, 2;
• 1830 - Steingel House - Gagarinsky Lane, building 15/7;
• 1830s - House of General N.F. Alekseeva - Sivtsev Vrazhek (corner of Kaloshin Lane), house 24/2;
• 1830s - House of M. A. Smirnov (not preserved, now a building built in 1903) - Verkhnyaya Kislovka;
• 1830s - House of M. N. Bulgakova - in Maly Uspensky Lane;
• 1830s - House on Malaya Bronnaya Street (not preserved);
• 1839-1850 - Ostozhenka, 37 (corner of 2nd Ushakovsky Lane, now Khilkov Lane). It is generally accepted that the house where I. S. Turgenev visited Moscow belonged to his mother, but N. M. Chernov, a researcher of Turgenev’s life and work, indicates that the house was rented from the surveyor N. V. Loshakovsky;
• 1850s - house of Nikolai Sergeevich Turgenev’s brother - Prechistenka, 26 (not preserved)
• 1860s - The house where I. S. Turgenev repeatedly visited the apartment of his friend, the manager of the Moscow appanage office, I. I. Maslov - Prechistensky Boulevard, 10;

In St. Petersburg

• End of summer 1839 - January 1841 - Efremova's house - Gagarinskaya street 12;
• October 1850 - April 1851 - Lopatin's house - Nevsky Prospekt, 68;
• December 1851 - May 1852 - Guillerme apartment building - Gorokhovaya street, 8, apt. 9;
• December 1853 - end of November 1854 - Povarsky Lane, 13;
• end of November 1854 - July 1856 - Stepanov's apartment building - embankment of the Fontanka River, 38;
• November 1858 - April 1860 - apartment building of F. K. Weber - Bolshaya Konyushennaya Street, 13;
• 1861; 1872; 1874; 1876 ​​- Hotel "Demut" - Moika River embankment, 40;
• January 4, 1864-1867 - Hotel "France" - Bolshaya Morskaya Street, 6;
• 1867 - V.P. Botkin’s apartment in Fedorov’s apartment building - Karavannaya Street, 14;
• May-June 1877 - furnished rooms at Bouillet - Nevsky Prospekt, 22;
• February-March 1879 - European Hotel - Bolshaya Italianskaya Street, 7.
• January-April 1880 - Kverner's furnished rooms - Nevsky Prospect, No. 11/Malaya Morskaya Street, No. 2/Kirpichny Lane, No. 2

Memory

The following objects are named after Turgenev.

Toponymy

• Streets and squares of Turgenev in many cities of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia.
• Moscow metro station "Turgenevskaya".

Public institutions

• Oryol State Academic Theater.
• Library-reading room named after I. S. Turgenev in Moscow.
• School of Russian language and Russian culture named after Turgenev (Turin, Italy).
• Russian Public Library named after I. S. Turgenev (Paris, France).
• Oryol State University named after I. S. Turgenev

Museums

• Museum of I. S. Turgenev (“ Mumu's house") - (Moscow, Ostozhenka St., 37).
• State Literary Museum of I. S. Turgenev (Oryol).
• Museum-reserve "Spasskoye-Lutovinovo" estate of I. S. Turgenev (Oryol region).
• Street and museum "I. S. Turgenev's Dacha" in Bougival, France.

Monuments

In honor of I. S. Turgenev the following were installed:

• monument in Moscow (in Bobrov Lane).
• monument in St. Petersburg (on Italianskaya street).
• Eagle:
  • Monument in Orel;
  • Bust of Turgenev on the "Noble Nest".

Other objects

• The name of Turgenev was borne by the branded train of JSC "FPK" Moscow - Simferopol - Moscow (No. 029/030) in common traffic with Moscow - Orel - Moscow (No. 33/34)
• In 1979, a crater on Mercury was named in honor of Turgenev.

In philately

• The writer is depicted on several Soviet stamps, as well as on a 1978 Bulgarian postage stamp.

Bibliography

Collected works

• Turgenev I. S. Collected works in 11 volumes. - M.: Pravda, 1949.
• Turgenev I. S. Collected works in 12 volumes. - M.: Fiction, 1953-1958.
• Turgenev I. S. Collected works in 15 volumes. - L.: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1960-1965.
• Turgenev I. S. Complete collection of works and letters in twenty-eight volumes. - M. - L.: Science, 1960-1968.
  • Works in fifteen volumes